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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298052">Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks'>acareeroutofrobbingbanks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>-Ish, Canon Compliant, Christmas, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, they all still forget but reddie overcomes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 01:01:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,382</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298052</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m going down to New York,” he announced, and got a small amount of pleasure as he watched Stan and Mike’s eyes bulge. “Today. I’m gonna go down and find him and bring him back so that he remembers - and he doesn’t have to stay, but you remember, remember how when Bill came to visit he did better for a while? I think the same thing will work. It’ll buy us more time, and maybe if we get him to keep coming…”<br/>	Eddie trailed off, seeing the complete shock on his friends’ faces.<br/>	“You’ve lost it,” Stan said, sounding almost admiring. <br/>	“Eddie, it’s Christmas Eve,” Mike said, ever the voice of reason. “The trains and buses aren’t running.”<br/>	“I was planning on driving myself,” Eddie said.<br/>	“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Stan said. “You don’t have a license!”<br/>	“No, but I’m a good driver,” Eddie said. “I just won’t get pulled over.”<br/>OR<br/>        Richie forgets. Eddie's not about to let him go without a fight.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>             The trouble came to a head on the first day of break. Stan was over the fucking moon because for once, finally, Hanukkah took place entirely after school let out. It also interceded with Christmas, which was less exciting, but still. It was a Saturday, exams were over, there was no school again until mid-January, and the ground was blanketed with snow. For the first time in months, Eddie felt good. He and Stan spent the whole first morning out of school just laying down on the floor in Mike’s room, the three of them catching up after barely speaking for weeks around finals’ season.</p>
<p>             “Setting the exams right before the holidays? Wack,” Mike said.</p>
<p>             “Wack?” Eddie said. “Did you just say ‘wack’?”</p>
<p>             “It’s not right before the holidays, it’s usually during the holidays,” Stan said. “We just got lucky this year. Speaking of holidays, did you guys wanna come over tonight?”</p>
<p>             “Do I have to wear, like, a suit?” Mike asked. </p>
<p>             “You can,” Stan said with a shrug. “My dad would think it was great. But you don’t have to dress up.”</p>
<p>             “Stan, your parents already love Mike,” Eddie said. “Everyone’s parents love Mike. He’s, like, the ultimate parent-friendly friend. Especially…”</p>
<p>             Eddie trailed off, and then felt his good mood sink down somewhere under the floorboards of the old farmhouse and disappear. Especially, he thought, in comparison to Richie. But there was no Richie to compare the other kids to. Not anymore.</p>
<p>             “He’s not dead,” Stan snapped, like he could hear Eddie’s train of thought. “You don’t have to have a weird moment of silence for him.”</p>
<p>             “Richie would never have wanted us to remember him quietly,” Mike said, then snorted. The unspoken question hung in the air. Eddie could feel their eyes on him, and it felt like a tangible weight, stretching him out, drawing him taut. It kept seeming like one of them would speak, would ask what they wanted to ask.</p>
<p>             Had Eddie heard from Richie? Did Richie still remember them? Or had he forgotten too? Like Bev, like Ben, like Bill. </p>
<p>             Everyone stopped calling, eventually. </p>
<p>             The silence beat painfully against Eddie’s ears, unbroken but for the gentle sounds of life downstairs. Mike’s grandma in the kitchen, laughing and clanging pans against the stove, his grandpa teasing her, his uncle joining in occasionally in his low, mellow voice. It sounded warm and familiar and in stark contrast with the empty, quiet upstairs bedroom.</p>
<p>             “I haven’t heard from him in a few weeks,” Eddie said at last. Mike and Stan were quiet for a moment.</p>
<p>             “And last time?” Stan asked. His voice was strained, sounding like it did when he was just a kid, trying not to cry, but Eddie didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about Richie at all, but unfortunately, Richie was just about the only thing he thought about.</p>
<p>             “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “He remembered my name, but he just told me to say hi to ‘the guys.’ And it took him a while to do either, so…”</p>
<p>             “Maybe he’s just… busy. Preoccupied,” Mike said. He sounded hopeful, like maybe he could convince himself to believe it. Eddie, because Mike was watching, very graciously didn’t roll his eyes. </p>
<p>             Stan sniffed. Eddie was laying on his back and staring fixedly at the ceiling, so he couldn’t say whether this was because he was that derisive of Mike’s pale attempt at cheering them up or if he was trying not to start crying, and he didn’t want to know. When Eddie left, he thought, he wasn’t going to make any stupid, empty promises about trying hard to remember all of them, and never forgetting to call. He was going to tell Stan and Mike sorry, nice knowing them, but he would embrace the stupid forgetfulness that came over everybody when they left. He didn’t want to remember how much this goddamned town had hurt him.</p>
<p>             “What about you, Eds?” Stan asked. “You coming?” </p>
<p>             “Um,” Eddie said. That was a dilemma. He didn’t really like religious stuff, or Stan’s dad, but Stan wanted him there, and it was a chance to get out of the house. Eddie would put up with just about any parents that weren’t his own, except… there was always a chance that tonight might be the night Richie remembered to call. </p>
<p>             In the end, though, tradition won out. He’d been doing Hanukkah at Stan’s house since he was five, and his dad had driven him there, telling his mom it was good for Eddie to experience other religions. His dad had won the argument before it turned into a fight, and squeezed Eddie’s shoulders as he walked him up to the Uris house. He told him to be good and to have fun, and given him a hug. It was one of the few memories Eddie had of his dad at all, and he clung to it. </p>
<p>             Besides, Richie would understand. Might even remember more, if he tried calling and realized why Eddie was out. Richie was always right there with him, being shockingly respectful as long as the Uris’s were watching.</p>
<p>             “Sure,” Eddie said at last, and tried not to sound defeated about it. He sat up, and Stan was smiling at him. Still sad, because these days, Stan always looked a little bit sad, even when he was happy, but Eddie knew he was doing the right thing.</p>
<p>             “Thanks,” he said, and Eddie smiled tentatively back at him. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             Richie had called them all down to the clubhouse earlier that year, way back in July. They hadn’t been using the clubhouse much since Ben moved away - who would repair it, Eddie asked, a little frantically, if they managed to break it? None of them knew how to build shit! After Bill moved, they only used it for what Mike had called Loser Emergency Meetings. Loser Emergencies included the time Eddie had been left tied to the goal post all night long, or the time Mike’s grandpa had a stroke and was hospitalized for a week.</p>
<p>             As a rule, they didn’t go back to hang out in the clubhouse for good things, so everyone was already nervous. It was made significantly worse when they saw the look on Richie’s face: dead serious, almost shy, and completely foreign to him. He looked like he was about to cry, and before he opened his mouth, Eddie thought about covering it, yelling at him to shut his stupid trashmouth because whatever the problem was couldn’t really be a problem and they’d deal with it, <em>together</em>, like they always did.</p>
<p>             He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Richie was the one that spoke.</p>
<p>             “We’re moving,” he said. Just that. Flat, like the words weren’t about the end of the whole fucking world. Like Eddie couldn’t feel all the stability of his legs giving out beneath him. Maybe it wasn’t even the end of the world. Just the end of Eddie’s world.</p>
<p>             The silence seemed to ring out over the clubhouse. There were four of them in it, but it felt big and empty without the others. (“Never thought I’d miss their stupid love triangle,” Richie had said once, “But it does get boring without Bevvie.”) It felt especially silent <em>then</em>, in <em>that </em>moment, because Richie was quiet, Richie was somber, Richie wasn’t cracking some joke about making a break for the border or them finally getting rid of him. It was like he knew what he was doing and was powerless to stop it anyway.</p>
<p>             “When?” Stan asked eventually. It was Stan’s job, as always, to remain pragmatic, to focus on the Who-What-Why-When-How of the matter. He would get to the meat of the matter and </p>
<p>             -<em>fix it</em>-</p>
<p>             -make sure that they all were on the same page.</p>
<p>             “In a month?” Richie said, his voice lilting up. “Maybe less? My mom got a job offer in New York, and my dad was thinking about retiring soon anyway, and…”</p>
<p>             He trailed off. His eyes were darting all around the clubhouse, landing on the old and dilapidated boards, on their torn up Lost Boys poster, on the tape deck, on Mike, anywhere but at Eddie, it seemed.</p>
<p>             They knew what it meant already, when someone went away. </p>
<p>             When Beverly left, everyone came to the assumption that she willfully forgot Derry, that she wasn’t returning their calls or their letters because she was trying to move on and became a new person. Some accepted that more easily than others. Bill ranted and raved and stuttered worse than ever about friends sticking together, no matter what, raged against Beverly in private, but Ben seemed quietly resigned, and everyone more or less fell into one of those two camps. For his part, Eddie couldn’t blame Beverly for wanting to forget Derry. He missed her, sure, and he wished that she missed him, but Derry had been a nightmare, and they all suspected it was more of a nightmare for Bev than for any of the rest of them. Eddie didn’t hold wanting to forget all that against her.</p>
<p>             Ben moved away next, when his mom lost her job. He stared at the ground when he told them Texas, that’s where he was going, and Richie congratulated him on getting the fuck out of Dodge. Ben had grinned and promised to write, and he had, at first. But eventually the letters and phone calls faded away. </p>
<p>             It was normal for friends to grow apart when they moved away, Eddie thought, but this felt a little to the left of normal. Something about it was off. Ben had <em>promised</em>, and Ben wasn’t the sort of person to make promises lightly. Eddie had gone out of his way to call Ben a few weeks after they’d all stopped hearing from him, and Ben had answered very politely, Hanscom Residence, who is this? When Eddie had announced himself, there was a long pause, and then Ben had said “Oh! Eddie, yeah, sorry, man. Yeah, I’ve missed you guys too.”</p>
<p>             It hadn’t sounded like he’d really remembered Eddie. And nobody wanted to say they were nervous, but they were all nervous.</p>
<p>             Then it got worse, so much worse. Because then Bill left.</p>
<p>             His parents couldn’t handle it, Richie had reasoned to Eddie late, late at night, in the dark of Eddie’s bedroom where Richie could be serious because no eyes could light on his face. Richie’s private theory, that Eddie thought held water, was that Bill’s parents knew what happened when you left Derry, and they wanted that. They wanted the amnesia of disappearing, to forget they ever had a second son and maybe recover what little scraps of their family they had left. </p>
<p>             Bill hated it. And once again he ranted and raged and screamed and threw things and stuttered his way through a screaming match with his father, but it was all to no avail. He was chided for behaving like a child when he was fourteen and knew better than that, and in the end, what could he really do? He was still a kid, after all. Short of running away, there was nothing he could do, and he would be caught if he ran to any of the Losers’ houses. His hands were tied.</p>
<p>             “It’s g-gonna b-be different with me,” Bill said, his hands on Eddie’s shoulders. His blue eyes were piercing, like chips of ice boring into Eddie’s skin, searching for his eyes, but Eddie did not want to meet his eyes. Did not want to see Bill for the last time, sure as typing “The End” on the last page of a manuscript. “I wo- I won’t forget,” Bill said, and Eddie could hear the tears in the back of his throat as he spoke. “I won’t, god dammit, I won’t!”</p>
<p>             He hadn’t. Not at first.</p>
<p>             They’d only moved to Bangor. It was so close that Bill’s parents drove him back one weekend the first month to go to the Canal Days festival, and after a few minutes of awkwardness, Bill had fallen right back in with the Losers, and it had been fine. He called a different one of them every night, to his parents’ endless chagrin, and Eddie could almost convince himself that Ben and Bev were flukes. Maybe Ben wanted to forget them, which stung, but was easier to accept than what Eddie feared was happening.</p>
<p>             But Bill started to forget too, in the end. He missed first one night at a time, then two, then three, and then one day he stopped calling all together. Stan called an emergency meeting, and when they got to the clubhouse, he was bawling on the ground, his back up against the wall. It hadn’t taken all that long to get the story out of him. He’d called Bill and introduced himself again and rather than remembering, Bill had said: “Sorry, I don’t know any Stans, I think you have a wrong number.” Then he’d hung up. One click, and Bill was gone forever.</p>
<p>             When he’d heard the story, Eddie was filled with a sudden, selfish gladness that it had been Stan to make the call rather than him. He didn’t want to hear Bill forget him, Bill, who had been like his older brother, who he’d built Silver with, who he’d fought evil with, Bill who’d been his best friend from the age of five, he’d rather just pretend Bill had died than hear him forget Eddie’s name. </p>
<p>             So.</p>
<p>             They knew what it meant when someone went away. They didn’t talk about it, if they could avoid it, but they all knew.</p>
<p>             “But why?” Eddie asked Richie. Richie had explained, sure, but not well enough. What could be good enough reason to disappear out of all of their lives forever? </p>
<p>             “My mom,” Richie said. He sounded pleading, like he was desperate for Eddie to understand, but he still wouldn’t meet Eddie’s eyes. All Eddie could see was the dull glint of Richie’s glasses, a faint orange glow from the sunlight above reflecting off the lenses. “She- I told her that- I mean, I asked her to please- just let me finish high school here, but she said- we’re going, is what I mean. To New York.”</p>
<p>             “The city, or the state?” asked Mike, who also didn’t sound like the whole world had been yanked out from under his feet, so he had a better hold on himself than Eddie, apparently. </p>
<p>             “City,” Richie said faintly. “Gonna rub elbows with all the hotshots in the big city-”</p>
<p>             “Beep beep, Richie,” said Stan bleakly, so Eddie didn’t have to. Eddie didn’t have the voice to stop him, didn’t have the breath to tell Richie to stop. All his breath had been ripped from his lungs, and he felt, for the first time in a long time, true need pulling at the base of his chest. He fumbled in his pocket for his aspirator, yanked it out so fast that it fell to the dirt floor. Eddie leaned down to pick it up and his hand brushed, for a moment, against Richie’s long fingers. He grabbed the inhaler and took a pulling, rattling breath from it, and took a step back, away from Richie, away from the nightmare.</p>
<p>             “Sorry,” Richie murmured, and Eddie wasn’t sure whether he was talking to him or Stan. </p>
<p>             “What can we do?” Mike asked. </p>
<p>             “I don’t think there’s anything to be done, Mikey,” Richie said. “It’s kind of a done deal here.”</p>
<p>             “No, I mean, is there anything we can do to make it easier for you?” Mike asked. Like he was dying. It was like Richie was dying, Eddie thought. Dead to all them. Like when Eddie’s dad was going and the doctor said they should do all they could to make him comfortable while he passed. </p>
<p>             Eddie thought Richie was gonna muster up some fake bravado, say he didn’t know what Mike meant and grin at them and make some joke about Eddie’s mom. But he didn’t. He just gulped, the dim light in the clubhouse glinting off his glasses so that Eddie couldn’t see his eyes.</p>
<p>             “Let’s just- can we just- pretend things are normal? Just for a little while longer?” Richie asked.</p>
<p>             “Of course we can, Rich,” Mike said. He put a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “Whatever you want.”</p>
<p>             “Starting now,” Richie mumbled, and Mike nodded. Mike was better at this than the rest of them.</p>
<p>             Stan settled into his usual spot and opened his bird book. When he caught Eddie glaring at him, he shrugged and said “What? We’re already here, might as well enjoy the escape from our parents.”</p>
<p>             “Fine by me. I call the hammock,” Richie said, and aside from swiping at his face once, he might as well not have been going through anything at all. Mike went over to turn on the music that they still kept down there, and then Eddie was the only one left frozen, standing in the middle of the room. </p>
<p>             Richie couldn’t just leave, he <em>couldn’t</em>. Of course, Bill couldn’t just leave, and he’d left, but Richie was different. Eddie couldn’t pinpoint why just yet, but he was. Richie had been around since before Eddie’s dad died. He’d been there for everything, through everything. He couldn’t just <em>leave</em>. </p>
<p>             No one noticed him for a minute, everyone so pointedly fixed on doing their own thing, getting lost in their own world like nothing was happening. But the minute passed, and eventually Richie looked up, his eyebrows knit together.</p>
<p>             “Eds?” he said. </p>
<p>             Eddie blinked at him, and realized to his horror that there was a prickling in the back of his eyes that signalled tears were coming. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and glared at Richie with all his might, hoping that might force the tears back where they’d come from.</p>
<p>             “Don’t fucking call me that,” he said. “What do you want?”</p>
<p>             “You’re usually trying to fight me off the hammock,” Richie said, looking taken aback at the venom. “I mean, if things are normal, then-”</p>
<p>             “I don’t want to lay on the fucking hammock with you. We’ll probably bring down the support beams and get buried alive in this fucking tomb,” Eddie snapped. With great effort, he forced himself to lean against the earthen wall. “In case you didn’t fucking remember, it’s not like any of this is up to code. I’m nervous just seeing you in there.”</p>
<p>             “Yeah?” Richie said, cocking one eyebrow. He began bouncing up and down in the hammock, causing all the wooden supports of the clubhouse to shake, and Eddie shrieked at him to stop it, and Stan rubbed his temples, and Mike smiled fondly at them. </p>
<p>             And it sorta felt like everything was normal. For the last time. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             So, Eddie got ready to go to the Chanukkah celebration. He didn’t wear a suit - he never had - but he did wear a nice shirt and tie along with the slacks that were part of the suit his mom bought him to go to his aunt’s funeral a year and a half or so back. The legs were too short after Eddie had hit another growth spurt, but they were all he really had aside from jeans, so he wore tall socks and hoped that the Uris family wouldn’t notice. </p>
<p>             As he was walking out the door with a tense “Bye, Mom,” he caught sight of the phone and stared at it for a moment. It seemed to grow larger, to take up too much space in his field of vision, to glow in the darkness of the kitchen. Richie probably wouldn’t call that night, Eddie thought, and he wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse. </p>
<p>             When he first left, Richie called Eddie every night (much to his parents’s dismay when looking at their hefty phone bill.) He whined about his new school and how boring it was, how all the kids there were yuppies and there was a <em>welcoming committee</em>, horror of horrors. He demanded to know every inconsequential thing that was going on in Derry, gave suggestions for how best to make Greta Keene’s life hell, a popular Loser hobby, and very plainly missed them all fiercely.</p>
<p>             At first, the phone calls came less often because Wentworth had bitten Richie’s head off about the constant phone use. The calls came once a week, but never at the same time each week. They were sporadic, so Eddie made sure he was always by the phone at seven PM just in case Richie called. </p>
<p>             Then, after a full eight days of radio silence, Eddie called Richie. And Richie apologized and said it was a one time thing, he didn’t mean to forget, he just lost track of things. And he called back again, the first time.</p>
<p>             Eddie stared at the phone before he left, willing Richie to call early when he knew Richie wasn’t going to call at all, as he hadn’t called on his own in a month and a half. </p>
<p>             Still, Eddie donned his coat and hat and scarf and gloves and walked down to Stan’s house, wishing he had his license already. He was sixteen (Richie hadn’t remembered his birthday, but he wasn’t thinking about it), he’d passed his test in Driver’s Ed, his mom just wouldn’t take him down to the DMV and sign the freaking paperwork so it would be official yet. Not that it would matter, as he couldn’t afford a car, but still, his mom would probably let him borrow the car to go out to prevent him from getting cold. Sometimes having an overprotective mother was worth it. </p>
<p>             Eddie knocked on the door and pasted on his most polite smiling-for-grownups smile. Mr. and Mrs. Uris liked him well enough, even though he knew they hated his mom. Sure enough, they welcomed him in with warm smiles. Mrs. Uris took his coat, and told him she’d made the sufganiyot specially with all of Eddie’s dietary restrictions in mind. </p>
<p>             The Uris house wasn’t his second home, the way Richie’s place had been. It wasn’t a safe, warm spot, like Mike’s bedroom or the clubhouse, but it was still homey. He settled into the dining room and gave Mike an encouraging smile across the table. Mike had worn a suit, and he was fussing with his tie.</p>
<p>             And Eddie really tried to think about other stuff, but in his mind’s eye all he could see was his house phone, growing bigger and bigger in his thoughts. What if Richie called that night? What if Eddie missed what could easily be his last call? Richie had never missed Chanukkah before, would he remember that? Would he remember Stan? Would he-?</p>
<p>             The night dripped by as slow as the wax melting down the sides of the first candle. Eddie ate one of the donuts to be polite, but his stomach churned. He should be home, he should be on the phone with Richie, they were supposed to be fighting this off, dammit, whatever this was. </p>
<p>             But Eddie was raised to be polite around adults, and he couldn’t leave Mike flailing on his own, nor could he abandon Stan with no one for company but his parents, so he stayed the whole evening, listening to the Uris family talking and occasionally chiming in with something inane about his schoolwork (poor) or the health of his mother (worse). </p>
<p>             When Mr. Uris finally (finally!) looked up at the clock, he remarked at how late the hour had gotten, and he said that Eddie and Mike should get home before their parents worried. And Mike didn’t correct him to say his parents couldn’t ever worry again, and Eddie didn’t correct him to say that his mom was always worried. They just smiled and nodded and thanked him and got into their coats, Eddie trying not to visibly rush.   </p>
<p>             Mike, who had a license but no car, walked his bike down halfway to Eddie’s house, the snow crunching under their feet. </p>
<p>             “You doing okay?” Mike asked Eddie.</p>
<p>             “Huh?” Eddie said, his head snapping over to Mike. “Yeah, of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?”</p>
<p>             “Dude,” Mike said, and rolled his eyes. “I mean. It’s Richie. You two were like this.” He held up two gloved fingers twisted together, and Eddie felt like he’d been punched in the stomach because Mike had used past tense. They <em>were </em>like that. Not anymore.</p>
<p>             “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie said, snippily. Mike sighed.</p>
<p>             “Okay,” he said. “If you ever wanna talk about it…”</p>
<p>             Eddie snorted a puff of cold breath into the air. </p>
<p>             “Stan’s parents mellowed out a bit,” Mike said, inconsequentially.</p>
<p>             “Mm,” Eddie said. “Yeah. I think after we got in real trouble they started to be grateful for the goody-two-shoes kid they’ve actually got.”</p>
<p>             “Probably,” Mike agreed. “Still, it was nice. I’d never seen something like that before.”</p>
<p>             “Mm,” said Eddie, noncommittally. The night had been bleary, his thoughts several streets away, and he hadn’t really noticed. </p>
<p>             Mike waved goodbye to him a few blocks away from his house, and Eddie hunched forward against the snow, trudging the rest of the way home. Snow clung to his eyelashes and burnt against his cheeks. Last winter, he and Richie had made the walk together. It had been snowing then too, and Richie had complained that if he had to wear glasses, they ought to at least come with tiny little windshield wipers.</p>
<p>             “I’m a genius,” Richie had proclaimed. Eddie had rolled his eyes and smacked Richie on the arm.</p>
<p>             “You’re a dumbass, is what you are,” he said. “How heavy would they have to be to contain, like, a battery pack to control the windshield wipers?”</p>
<p>             “My glasses are already pretty front-heavy with the lenses being as thick as they are,” Richie reasoned. “We’d just put the batteries on the arms to even out the weight distribution.”</p>
<p>             Eddie rolled his eyes again, and shivered, and leaned into Richie against the cold, walking a little bit behind him so that Richie shielded him from the wind. Richie caught on pretty quick, though.</p>
<p>             “Hey, none of that!” he said. “If I’m getting face-fucked by the snow, so are you.”</p>
<p>             “I don’t even think you know what face fucking is,” Eddie had said. Richie had a dangerous gleam in his eyes.</p>
<p>             “Want me to show you?” he said. Eddie was still processing that when Richie ducked down and pushed a handful of snow in Eddie face. And Eddie had screeched and grabbed his own chunk of snow, and it had turned into a full on snowball battle right there in the middle of Kessler street.</p>
<p>             Maybe that was the problem with Richie being gone. Maybe the issue was that now everything was quiet all the time.</p>
<p>             Eddie trudged the rest of the way home through the slick streets and opened the door quietly, so as to not wake his mother if she were asleep in front of the TV as he hoped she was. Naturally, he had no such luck. </p>
<p>             “Eddie!”</p>
<p>             Eddie turned to the living room, where his mom was illuminated by the blue glow of the TV, brighter than the technicolor Christmas tree in the corner. Eddie tensed, turning slowly into the living room.</p>
<p>             “Hey, Mommy,” he said, smiling wanly.</p>
<p>             “How was dinner?” she asked.</p>
<p>             “It was good. Stan’s mom made donuts that were safe for me to eat,” he said. Please let this end, he thought, let him go to bed and wallow.</p>
<p>             “Someone called for you,” she said. Eddie turned all the way around, his eyes going wide.</p>
<p>             “When?” he asked. </p>
<p>             “About an hour ago,” she said, unconcerned.</p>
<p>             “Who?” Eddie demanded.</p>
<p>             “I don’t know,” his mom said, and Eddie felt a stirring of unease in his stomach. She might not like Richie, but pretending she didn’t know him wasn’t like her. “I wrote the number down. You’ll have to wait till morning to call; it’s too late now.”</p>
<p>             Eddie bobbed his head in a nod and ran into the kitchen without so much as saying goodnight to her. He snatched the note off the table, and saw a Maine area code. Eddie made a noise of disgust and threw the note back on the table. His mom would be expecting him to go back, to kiss her goodnight, but Eddie had no energy left to pretend.</p>
<p>             He dragged his feet as he climbed up the stairs, and curled up in his bed while trying not to think about Richie, and failing miserably. They’d spent too many nights together curled up in this exact same bed for him to fight off the waves of memories crashing around in his head like waves at high tide. He wished, selfishly, knowing it was selfish, that he had moved instead of Richie, that he could be the one to forget and not have to face the days with all the memories of Richie. It was all-permeating, his thoughts, because everywhere in town he’d been he’d been with Richie, and every place reminded him of him. There was nowhere to go to escape his memories, and Richie was just getting to forget, to move on without Eddie. It wasn’t fair.</p>
<p>             Eddie dug his face deeper down into the hypoallergenic pillowcase, till his ear was buried in layers of fabric and down, till he could hear his heartbeat echoing off the inside of his ears. </p>
<p>             Why? He wondered. Why did this hurt so much more than Bill? He’d known Bill even longer than Richie, had looked up to him like the older brother he’d never had. Why was it so much worse losing Richie when this time he had a warning that it was coming? When he’d had time to prepare himself? When his dad had been dying of cancer, and he knew the death was coming, that blow was softer than Georgie, because he knew the end was inevitable. Why wasn’t it the same with Richie?</p>
<p>             He felt a wetness on his cheek, and realized to his dismay that he was crying. Of all the stupid things. He blinked hard, forcing the lingering tears out of his eyes, and rolled onto his back. He could feel the damp pillow on the back of his neck, and feel the trembling in his chest. His mind stuttered into sleep, jerking back out into wakeful misery over and over until finally, exhaustion pulled him under.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             Though Eddie had been thrilled at the start of winter break to get out of school for a few weeks, it only took a day of Christmas vacation in the house with his mom to get bored of it. He woke up on Monday, the third night of Chanukah, feeling desolate. What was there to do, anyway? He couldn’t drive anywhere, and it was too cold to bike. He could go to Mike’s house, or Stan’s, but that was it. And Stan’s family with religious stuff most days, Mr. Uris seeing to his congregation (Eddie wondered, idly, if they were still called a congregation when they were Jewish. He thought congregation was a secular word, but he wasn’t sure. Richie would’ve known.) and Mike’s family was busy during the days too, even in the dead of winter there was farm work to be done. </p>
<p>             So, it was go out and brave the cold to wander the streets aimlessly and probably catch pneumonia and die, or sit at home with his mom watching reality TV. He couldn’t decide which sounded less appealing, so he spent most of his day hiding in his room, rereading the same old X-Men comics over and over and over again. The sound of the television droned up the stairs, and when his mom creaked up the stairs as well, Eddie hid under the covers, feeling childish, but unwilling to spend quality time with her or anyone.</p>
<p>             “You feeling sick, Eddie-bear?” she asked. The bed dipped under her as she sat on its edge, and her hand was clammy and cold against his forehead.</p>
<p>             “A little, yeah,” Eddie said. His throat was still sore from crying in the night, and the gravelly tone he had added to the facade. One other good thing about Eddie’s house - it was very easy to fake sick, whenever he needed to. “I think I just need rest.”</p>
<p>             “Okay, sweetie,” his mom said, and she pressed a lipstick-sticky kiss to his forehead. “Feel better. I’ll go get you some soup.”</p>
<p>             “Thanks,” Eddie croaked, and then rolled over to stare at the wall. </p>
<p>             By Wednesday, it had been two full weeks since Richie had called, and Eddie was going out of his mind. He finally copied down the number from his notebook to a Post-It note with shaky handwriting, and when his mom went to the bathroom, he dialed quickly. His fingers bounced around the number pad on the phone, the cold plastic biting into his skin. The house was kept toasty - nearly eighty degrees inside year round - but Eddie was freezing, and the fear that froze his heart radiated out from his chest, chilling him to the tips of his fingers. </p>
<p>             With his left hand, he tapped his fingers on the kitchen table convulsively. He cradled the phone between his shoulder and his head so that he could use his right hand to hold the left still. He felt his heart thrumming in his stomach and the soles of his feet. The phone rang for the first time, and he felt his heart move to somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam’s apple. </p>
<p>             “Please pick up,” Eddie whispered to himself. “Please, please pick up.”</p>
<p>             The phone rang again.</p>
<p>             Surely if they had caller ID it would show up as a Maine area code and jolt Richie’s memory. Surely even if not, even if he didn’t remember, he would hear Eddie’s voice and recall that it was him. That Eddie was sure of. Richie might have forgotten him - out of sight, out of mind - but when he heard Eddie’s voice, it would come back again. He knew it would. He knew it.</p>
<p>             The phone rang again.</p>
<p>             Was there a chance that the Tozier’s were out? It was December 23rd, not exactly a holiday, but close enough that they could be doing family stuff. Going out to some fancy business dinner, or a Christmas party hosted by his mom’s new job, maybe. The idea of not hearing Richie’s voice at all filled him with dread, but he was also secretly a little hopeful. If he didn’t have to hear Richie’s voice, that was another day he could pretend Richie remembered him.</p>
<p>             The phone rang again.</p>
<p>             When was it polite to just hang up? Eddie couldn’t remember how many rings you were supposed to wait, or how many he had waited for thus far. He held the phone in his hand again, pushing it so close to his ear that it felt like he was leaving a bruise. </p>
<p>             “Hello?” Richie said. And as soon as his voice hit Eddie’s ear, all the irrational fear melted away. It was <em>Richie</em>, and he was there and he was fine and Eddie felt a stupid stinging at the back of his eyes like he might cry just from hearing his voice. Ridiculous. Why was he acting like this? It was Richie, and he was just Eddie’s dumb best friend. But Eddie didn’t think he’d ever been happier to hear anything.</p>
<p>             “<em>Hey</em>,” Eddie breathed. “Hi. Holy shit, dude, you haven’t called. How’s it going?”</p>
<p>             There was a pause, just a heartbeat throbbing in Eddie’s ear, in his fingertips, but he knew something was wrong.</p>
<p>             “I’m sorry, who’s this?” Richie asked. </p>
<p>             Eddie, who was in that moment hyper-aware of his heartbeat, felt it stutter. He felt the all-too familiar sensation of his throat tightening, and as he took in a thin breath, he felt very little air fill his lungs. For the first time in too long, he needed his inhaler, and he didn’t have it with him. </p>
<p>             He couldn’t just hang up. He gulped down another shaky breath, then wheezed out:</p>
<p>             “It’s me, Richie. It’s Eddie.”</p>
<p>             “Eddie…?” Richie said blankly. Eddie’s throat was a pinhole, air whistling in his throat.</p>
<p>             “Eddie Kaspbrak,” Eddie said slowly, the only way he could speak. He was holding the phone too tightly and not tightly enough, white knuckled and yet it felt as though it might slip through his fingers. “From. From Derry?”</p>
<p>             “Derry?”</p>
<p>             “Derry, Maine,” Eddie pleaded, his voice getting higher and more incomprehensible as the panic gripped his lungs ever tighter. “We- I’m your friend?”</p>
<p>             “I’m sorry,” Richie said. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”</p>
<p>             No, no, no, this wasn’t how it worked, Eddie was supposed to have more time, to know he was saying goodbye the last time, to be able to say goodbye, this wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. He sucked at the air, desperate to inhale, but it was like he was drowning on dry land.</p>
<p>             “Is this- if you’re joking, Richie, it’s not funny,” Eddie said. </p>
<p>             “I’m not joking,” Richie said, sounding annoyed now. “Look, I don’t know who you are, I’ve never heard of Derry, Maine, and I think you’ve got a wrong number.”</p>
<p>             “Wait-!” Eddie cried out, but then he heard the dial tone.</p>
<p>             He was still clutching the phone to his ear, listening to the tone burr into his ear when his mom came out of the bathroom.</p>
<p>             “Not calling that awful Richie boy again, are you?” his mother asked disdainfully. “I told you we can’t afford any more long distance calls! Besides, you’re better off without a terrible influence like him in your life.”</p>
<p>             Eddie slowly placed the phone back on the hook, but the dial tone was still buzzing in his ear like he hadn’t moved.</p>
<p>             “Eddie, I’m talking to you,” his mom said. </p>
<p>             Eddie turned to face her, blinked. In spite of the stinging in his eyes, they were utterly dry. </p>
<p>             “Eddie,” his mom repeated. He was facing her, should have been looking right at her, and yet he couldn’t see her. All he could comprehend was Richie, unremembering and annoyed, like he’d grown out of Eddie like an old t-shirt. Eddie sucked in another wheezy, thin breath.</p>
<p>             “Eddie!” his mom said. “Your aspirator, where is your-?”</p>
<p>             Eddie shouldered past her and up the stairs, clutching the railing tight as he walked, holding onto it like a lifeline. The carpet and the stairs all blurred in his eyes, but that didn’t matter, because he wasn’t seeing anything he looked at anyway. He could visualize what Richie would have looked like perfectly, from the bored and aloof expression on his face to the stupid, beat-up Converse he would be wearing, even in the dead of winter, even when the snow soaked through his stupid, canvas shoes and made them as effective at keeping out the cold as wet socks. These days, Richie cared more about the punk look than keeping warm, he had for a couple of years. </p>
<p>             Every thought of Richie burnt in his skull like the cherry on a cigarette pressing directly into Eddie’s brain, but Richie was all he could think of.</p>
<p>             Eddie flung himself on the bed and yanked open the drawer of his bedside table, pulled out his emergency inhaler and took a desperate suck of air from it. He felt the cool, medicine cloud slide down his throat, but there was almost no relief tied to the action. His breath didn’t come any easier, and his lungs still burned. The tightness behind his eyes twisted like there were screws behind his eyelids, and he gagged on the almost licorice taste of the air from his inhaler. </p>
<p>             Richie had- but Eddie couldn’t even think the words. He felt acid burbling in his esophagus. </p>
<p>             Richie had forgotten him. Really, actually forgotten him. </p>
<p>             “Eddie?” </p>
<p>             His mother’s voice came from behind him, not directly behind him, but hovering in the doorway, uncertain. “Eddie-bear, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Are you hurt?”</p>
<p>             Eddie didn’t think he’d ever been quite so hurt in his life, but he could hardly tell his mother that. </p>
<p>             “I’m fine!” he spat, turning around to glare at her. “I’m fine, okay! Just leave me alone!”</p>
<p>             He saw hurt flash in his mother’s eyes, then a hardness. She stepped over the threshold and into his room, and though Eddie was taller than her, he was curled up on his bed, and she towered over him.</p>
<p>             “Don’t take that tone with me,” she said, her voice dangerous and low. Eddie couldn’t bring himself to care. He could just barely fight the waterworks threatening to burst behind his eyes, because he was a stupid fucking crybaby that couldn’t get over anything, even when he knew it was going to happen. He grabbed the edge of the blanket and pulled it over himself. His mother walked over to him and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. Her hand was warm and sweat-damp, and it made the nausea in Eddie’s stomach roil. What was wrong with him? </p>
<p>             “You feel a little clammy,” she said. “Are you coming down with something?”</p>
<p>             It would be easier to say yes, Eddie knew. To say yes, Mommy, he was coming down with something and he didn’t feel well and to take two aspirin with a glass of cold water and curl up under the covers and be taken care of. But he remembered, he remembered so fiercely who he really was, as if Richie’s forgetting had burnt the memories all the more clearly into Eddie’s mind. He wasn’t sick.</p>
<p>             “I’m fine!” he shouted, and skittered back deeper into the pile of pillows on his bed. His mother looked angry then, <em>thunderous</em>, but Eddie couldn’t bring himself to feel threatened. He was too upset to care what his mother thought.</p>
<p>             “Who were you on the phone with?” she asked.</p>
<p>             “No one,” Eddie said, and the words echoed back at him mockingly. No one, no one, no one to Eddie, not anymore, as Eddie was certainly no one to Richie. </p>
<p>             “You will tell me who you were on the phone with,” she said. Eddie said nothing.</p>
<p>             “Fine,” said his mother, and though Eddie had by then turned to face the wall again, he could see the look of cool calculation that would be on her face. “That’s just fine, then. Well, if you don’t feel like talking to me, you are <em>grounded</em>, and you can stay in here anyway.”</p>
<p>             Eddie, feeling spiteful and hopeless, flipped her his middle finger. She let out a gasp of outrage and slammed the bedroom door behind her, which, all in all, Eddie considered to be a win. </p>
<p>             It’s already happened before, he reasoned with himself. They lost Bev and Ben and <em>Bill</em>, Big Bill, how could it be harder than that?</p>
<p>             Eddie didn’t know, but it was. He missed Richie’s face, the light in his eyes after he told a joke, his long-fingered hands firm on Eddie’s arm.</p>
<p>             Then it hit him, like a punch in the gut, so sudden and so overwhelming that he doubled in on himself on the bed. </p>
<p>             Oh. Oh no.</p>
<p>             Eddie had a tendency to be a little bit ditzy and slow on reading comprehension, but he wasn’t stupid. Sometime after he turned fourteen he realized that he just couldn’t relate to the other guys when they talked about girls. He waited a few months for it to develop, observing himself with a sort of detached curiosity. He stared at Sally Muehler in gym glass during the gymnastics unit for a whole class period, his eyes boring holes into the back of her neck, and willed himself to feel something, <em>anything</em> for the pretty girl.</p>
<p>             But no. Zip.</p>
<p>             Eddie decided the experiment was only fair if he looked at a boy too. After all, he could just be a really late bloomer, or perhaps he was broken or sick in some other way, feeling attraction to no one. The next day in gym, he watched Vince run the same obstacle course as he had seen Sally doing the day before, watched as his arms pumped, as the muscles on his legs under short shorts grew thick and defined, saw the sweat beading on the hairline of his thick, dark hair. To Eddie’s mild but unsurprised dismay, he felt the warm curl of definitely something in his stomach, something he quashed as soon as he began to think of it, looking away from Vince with brilliantly red cheeks. </p>
<p>             So. Eddie knew he was gay by the time he was fourteen, and he had made the executive decision to deal with that later. Not in Derry, not with his mom hovering over him, talking about all those awful homosexuals with their AIDS and their dirty habits. Eddie vowed to be aware of it, to be careful of himself, but generally to not think about it. </p>
<p>             Now it was brought to the forefront of his mind against his will, because there was a way that Richie was different. He wasn’t just Eddie’s best friend, wasn’t just the person in the world closest to Eddie, the only person he could call when his mom was too much, the only person he could really talk to, alone, in the dark, when Richie would let himself be vulnerable with only Eddie. He realized just then, alone in his bedroom, that Richie was beautiful, and that thought functioned as a great crack in the dam of his brain, all the thoughts he had held back from even himself bursting forth.</p>
<p>             He loved Richie. He was in love with Richie. He needed Richie like he needed air, needed to touch him, hear his laugh, feel his warm breath against Eddie’s ear in that way that would make his knees feel shaky. He could easily visualize Richie’s dark, curly hair slipping in front of his eyes, his glasses flashing in the sun in the quarry, the sensual double-curve of his lip-</p>
<p>             Eddie shot up in bed, gasping for breath again. He pawed around on the bedspread for his inhaler, his air coming in thin wheezes. Air, he needed air, he needed to somehow be able to breathe again without thinking of Richie’s mouth on his-</p>
<p>             Eddie gripped the cool plastic of the aspirator and brought it to his mouth, shooting the medicine taste into the back of his throat again. He let out a shaky breath. God, oh God, of all the awful things to happen to him, he had to fall in love with Richie Tozier? And realize it only once he was gone? What luck, that Eddie hadn’t known to be awkward and hopeless and tongue-tied in front of him while Richie was still around. What cruelty, that he never got the chance to hold Richie’s hand while imagining it meant something more than it did. His heart burnt like it had been stabbed with a branding iron. </p>
<p>             Eddie rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. It was a popcorn ceiling, the kind that scraped up your hands and your head if you brushed it while jumping on the bed. Richie had had a nice, flat ceiling that he’d papered with posters of punk and grunge bands, covering up the glow-in-the-dark stars he and Eddie had glued up when they were little kids. Eddie was in love with Richie Tozier, and he was gone, really, irretrievably gone, and there was nothing Eddie could do about it ever again.</p>
<p>             Misery swallowed him whole. </p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             Eddie spent the rest of the evening staring up at the ceiling. The sky was already dark out, full winder-blackness, but he knew the evening was passing him by even without the changing light to tell him the time. Eddie wanted to disappear, he supposed, to no longer exist. He wasn’t suicidal, not exactly, but he did wish to have never been born in the first place. He missed Richie, and the thought of how much he missed him played like a drumbeat in the back of Eddie’s mind. He missed Richie, he missed Richie, he missed Richie. </p>
<p>             His mom came up again before she went to bed, kissed him on the forehead wetly while he pretended to be asleep. He then went back to staring at the wall, at the window, dinged up with scratches where Richie had thrown rocks at it. </p>
<p>             Richie, Richie, Richie.</p>
<p>             When Eddie finally rolled over and looked at the clock, it was a little after three in the morning. Richie would still be awake, but he lived in New York, so what good would that do?</p>
<p>             New York, Eddie thought. It wasn’t even that far away. They were on the same coast, just a seven hour drive, really.</p>
<p>             Eddie sat bolt upright in his bed. Only a seven hour drive, he thought to himself again. He could drive seven hours. He’d done interstate driving in his driver’s ed class, he knew what he was doing. He was an excellent driver, really, the only problem was that he didn’t have his license yet. </p>
<p>             But no, the idea (half-formed as it was) was absolutely crazy. Richie didn’t remember Eddie’s voice or his name or the entire city of Derry, so how the hell was he supposed to remember just because Eddie showed up at his house?<br/>             (Oh, but the idea of showing up at his house was so desperately thrilling, the idea of seeing Richie again, seeing his lazy grin, his bright, mocking eyes.)</p>
<p>             Absolutely insane. But after the day he’d had, Eddie felt more than a little insane. All he needed was a car.</p>
<p>             Eddie got out of bed, landing softly on the balls of his feet and padding to the closet. He changed his clothes, switching into the warmest jeans he owned and a few layers of sweaters, then put on shoes and socks. It was too loud, trying to walk past his mom’s room, so he opened the window instead and climbed out onto the roof. </p>
<p>             Insane, he told himself again, more insistently, almost hysterically. </p>
<p>             Richie, the louder part of his brain shouted back. Then he carefully slid his window shut and crawled down to the edge of the roof, dropping lithely into the snowdrift below. </p>
<p>             Eddie felt a strange giddiness building in his chest, something close to euphoria, simply because he was doing something, anything. He had a plan, and he wasn’t left so helpless as he had been five minutes ago. He glanced up to be sure he had shut the window all the way, then ran around the side of his house and down the block. He had to tell someone, get some advice, so he half-ran through the empty streets to Stan’s house, where he found his window and hurled a snowball at it.</p>
<p>             “Wake up,” Eddie whispered to himself. “C’mon, wake up.”</p>
<p>             When Stan didn’t come to the window, Eddie sighed and balled up another handful of snow and threw it at the window, hard. He could hear the glass reverberating from the yard below, where there were no other sounds but the gentle brush of snow against snow. </p>
<p>             Eddie was just rearing up to throw a third snowball when he saw Stan’s tired and puzzled face framed in the window. He opened the window and glared down at Eddie.</p>
<p>             “It’s, like, almost four in the morning,” Stan groaned. “What do you want?”</p>
<p>             “Loser’s Club Emergency Meeting,” Eddie said. “ASAP. I’m gonna go get Mike, you get dressed and get down to the clubhouse.”</p>
<p>             “It’s <em>four in the morning</em>,” Stan repeated, but Eddie simply stared at him, pleading. </p>
<p>             “It’s about Richie,” he said. Stan’s expression changed, grew inscrutable, then he nodded, and shut his window. </p>
<p>             Eddie stole Stan’s bike from the side yard to go to Mike’s. Stan still had a bike that fit him, unlike Eddie, who’d grown out of his and his mother refused to buy him another. He rode his bike through the almost menacingly quiet streets of Derry, under the neon orange glow of the street lights and getting his face properly coated in snow as he went. </p>
<p>             Even riding carefully over the ice, he reached Mike’s farm in record time, and quickly found Mike’s window, repeating the same process he had gone through at Stan’s house. Luckily, Mike was quicker on the uptake.</p>
<p>             “Be right out,” was all he said as soon as Eddie said it was a Loser’s Club Emergency Meeting, and he was out the door buttoning up his coat within five minutes. The two of them biked to the clubhouse in the dead silence, while Eddie’s throbbing heart reminded them it was the first time he had been there since Richie told them he was leaving. </p>
<p>             Stan was already there when Eddie and Mike arrived, leaving their bikes piled up outside the hatch into the clubhouse. Some of the dense snow slid into the clubhouse when Eddie opened the hatch, landing on a thicker pile already on the ground inside. Stan was standing in the corner, shivering, with one battery-powered lamp glowing in the middle of the floor. He looked sour.</p>
<p>             “What’s the emergency?” he asked, a nervous bite to his voice. Mike moved to stand by Stan, looking at Eddie expectantly as well. It was too grand, Eddie thought, to have declared an emergency meeting, now that there were only three of them, but too late to worry about that now. He took in a deep breath.       </p>
<p>             “It’s Richie,” he said. “I called tonight- last night? - and he didn’t remember me. Not when I said my name, not when I mentioned Derry.”</p>
<p>             He said the words flatly, emotionlessly, but they stung his lips as he spoke them. The aching in his chest throbbed dully. Stan looked like he might cry, and Mike looked flat and detached, but neither of them looked surprised.</p>
<p>             “It’s four AM,” Stan sniped. “Couldn’t you have waited to tell us till morning?”</p>
<p>             “No, because that’s not- it’s not exactly why I called the meeting,” Eddie said. A snippy little voice in the back of his head, the practical, sensical voice that told him when he was being an idiot, said that this was so, so stupid, and he could just let it go now, and no one would be the wiser. </p>
<p>             But Eddie couldn’t. He couldn’t just let it go.</p>
<p>             “I’m going down to New York,” he announced, and got a small amount of pleasure as he watched Stan and Mike’s eyes bulge. “Today. I’m gonna go down and find him and bring him back so that he remembers - and he doesn’t have to stay, but you remember, remember how when Bill came to visit he did better for a while? I think the same thing will work. It’ll buy us more time, and maybe if we get him to keep coming…”</p>
<p>             Eddie trailed off, seeing the complete shock on his friends’ faces.</p>
<p>             “You’ve lost it,” Stan said, sounding almost admiring. </p>
<p>             “Eddie, it’s Christmas Eve,” Mike said, ever the voice of reason. “The trains and buses aren’t running.”</p>
<p>             “I was planning on driving myself,” Eddie said.</p>
<p>             “Oh, this just gets better and better,” Stan said. “You don’t have a license!”</p>
<p>             “No, but I’m a good driver,” Eddie said. “I just won’t get pulled over.”</p>
<p>             “You <em>are </em>insane,” said Mike, sounding more concerned than anything. “Eddie - he knew it was going to happen. We knew it was going to happen. It’s just something that happens when you leave Derry. We can’t stop it.”</p>
<p>             “But this is different!” Eddie said. He didn’t know how to explain to them that this was different, the two of them looking down at him with annoyance and pity. He didn’t know how to tell them why Richie wasn’t like anyone else without giving himself away. He couldn’t impress upon them that it was <em>Richie </em>and Richie wasn’t just anybody, not even just any loser. He felt his hands ball up into fists. </p>
<p>             “Eddie,” Stan said, his voice having lost its bite. He was softer, gentler, <em>pitying</em>. “We’ve been through this before. I remember when Bill forgot-”</p>
<p>             “But it’s not the same!” Eddie all but screamed, too loud for their secret little clubhouse in the middle of the barrens. Anyone passing through their little lush jungle would hear him, if they decided the best time to take a hike was four AM on December 24th. </p>
<p>             “I know what you’re feeling,” Stan said, frustrated again, and Eddie just shook his head.</p>
<p>             “No, you don’t,” he said. Stan inhaled deeply, exhaled pointedly.</p>
<p>             “I do,” he said. “I get it, okay? I miss Richie too. And I know he’s your best friend, but we’ve all been through this before. All we can do is move on.”</p>
<p>             “I refuse,” Eddie said. “I’m not going to just move on and pretend this isn’t happening, not with him.”</p>
<p>             “What makes him so special?” Stan asked, not unkindly. He sounded gentle still, like he was trying to reason Eddie out of a nightmare. “Really, what’s the difference?”</p>
<p>             “The difference-” Eddie choked. His throat was starting to close, his lungs protesting, like the very thought of Richie ripped the air out of his chest. He fumbled for his inhaler and took a drag from it, his throat positively slimy with the medicine taste after using it three times in one night. </p>
<p>             “The difference is… complicated,” Eddie said. He couldn’t keep the misery out of his voice, hard as he tried. “Look, there’s more to this than just me missing my best friend, okay? He’s <em>Richie</em>. It’s different.”</p>
<p>             “No it’s not!” Stan said, raising his voice as well. “He’s just like the rest of us, just like Ben and Bev and Bill!”</p>
<p>             “He’s not the same to me!” Eddie yelled back. Then he froze, felt warmth rising in his cheeks. Had he said too much?</p>
<p>             Stan’s eyebrows pulled together. Mike’s eyes were slightly wide, but he made no other movements. Eddie was frozen. He <em>had </em>said too much.</p>
<p>             “Why is Richie different for you?” Mike asked in his low, calm voice. Eddie felt the now-familiar prickling at the back of his eyes, and he stared at the earthen floor, spattered with snow, unable to meet either of their eyes. </p>
<p>             “He’s different to me,” Eddie admitted miserably. “I don’t like him like I like any of my other friends. Don’t love him the way I love anyone else.”</p>
<p>             “Love him?” Stan said, uncertainly. Eddie looked up at him, met his pale eyes and begged him, silently, to not be stupid about it, not now. Stan’s eyebrows raised infinitesimally and he nodded as well. </p>
<p>             “Right,” he said. “Right. Well, that’s. Different.”</p>
<p>             Eddie almost cracked. He almost pleaded with them not to hate him, not to treat him different, but instead he looked back down at the floor, feeling awash with a strange sense of shame. He wasn’t ashamed of loving Richie, not really, but he was ashamed of himself, of whatever was wrong with him that made him that way. More than that, he felt unclean in the way he was begging them to understand. Like he was airing out dirty laundry, or panhandling on a street corner. </p>
<p>             “You don’t have to come,” Eddie said, his voice much lower now, barely more than a whisper so that it would not crack. “I just wanted to let you know.”</p>
<p>             Mike snorted out a laugh, and Eddie looked up. Both of their expressions were bleak, but steadfast.</p>
<p>             “Yeah, right,” Mike said. “You’d get killed all on your own in New York.”</p>
<p>             “We’re coming with,” Stan said. “I don’t like it, but-” </p>
<p>             He cut himself off, exchanged an inscrutable glance with Mike. </p>
<p>             “We’re not letting you go alone,” Stan said finally. </p>
<p>             “But,” Eddie said, blinking. “But it’s Christmas eve. It’s the- what night of Chanukah is it?”</p>
<p>             “The sixth night,” Stan said. “Our families are gonna kill us, but they probably won’t be as bad as your mom.”</p>
<p>             “Yeah, but,” Eddie said.</p>
<p>             “Why tell us if you didn’t want us to come?” Mike asked, a light smile permeating his tone.</p>
<p>             “Besides,” said Stan.</p>
<p>             “Losers gotta stick together,” Mike finished. </p>
<p>             Eddie was already overwhelmed with emotion, and every little thing seemed to set him off. Still, he swallowed the lump in his throat.</p>
<p>             “I- thanks,” he said. “You guys-”</p>
<p>             “Save all the mushy crap for reuniting with Richie,” said Stan, suddenly businesslike. “Now. How are you getting your hands on a car?”</p>
<p>             “I can’t go back into my house,” Eddie said. “My mom would wake up, and she’d go ballistic. Besides, she needs a car so she can get to the pharmacy or the doctor’s office or whatever. So, I know where they keep the keys to the driver’s ed car. I saw Mr. Hill putting them away after class one day. All we have to do is break into the office and grab them, then we’ll be good to go.”</p>
<p>             “Oh, is that all?” asked Stan sarcastically, but Eddie nodded.</p>
<p>             “It’s Christmas Eve,” he reminded him. “Nobody’s gonna be in the school, not the janitor, not anyone. Even if they’ve installed security cameras, they might not check. We’ll be back before they know we’re gone.”</p>
<p>             “What if they check the odometer?” Mike asked. Eddie swore.</p>
<p>             “Well, we’ll hope that they don’t?” he said. “We just have to make sure we don’t wreck the car or anything.”</p>
<p>             “We could get arrested for this,” Stan said. “Like, actually arrested, tried as adults.”</p>
<p>             “Me especially,” Mike added. </p>
<p>             “That’s why it’s important that we don’t get caught,” Eddie said. “Look, I’ll sneak into the building, and we’ll wipe down all our fingerprints when we’re done. You guys will never be implicated.”</p>
<p>             “Except when our families tell the police we’ve gone missing the same day,” Stan muttered. Mike elbowed him. </p>
<p>             “We’re with you,” Mike said. “When do you want to leave?”</p>
<p>             “Well,” said Eddie. “No time like the present.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             The three of them stashed Stan and Mike’s bikes inside the clubhouse to protect them from the snow falling outside. By the time they left it wasn’t yet five in the morning, according to the digital watch on Eddie’s wrist, and the sky hadn’t even threatened to become lighter. That was good, Eddie thought. The cover of darkness might help hide his face from security cameras should his plans all go haywire. </p>
<p>             They walked down to the high school together. It was foreign to Eddie in the full darkness, as he’d never been in the sort of before or after-school clubs that kept him in the building after the sunset. The middle school-high school seemed to loom out of the darkness, tall and intimidating, its stone facade leached from yellow to bone-white in the colorlessness of night. </p>
<p>             The office where Eddie had seen the keys stashed was towards the front of the building, so they hid in the bushes by the main entrance, half-buried in the snow. </p>
<p>             “Okay,” Stan said. “Is it too late for me to back out?”</p>
<p>             “Yes,” said Eddie. “Okay. Okay. Fuck. Does anyone know how to pick a lock?”</p>
<p>             “You don’t know how you’re getting in?!” Stan hissed at him. “Did you think through any part of this plan at all?”</p>
<p>             “I thought through the part about getting the driver’s ed car,” Eddie whispered back.</p>
<p>             “There’s no microphones on these cameras,” Mike said at full volume. “You guys don’t have to whisper.”</p>
<p>             “This is completely and utterly insane,” Stan said, still in an undertone. “You can’t just expect us to know how to pick locks to aid and abet your crimes!”</p>
<p>             “You offered!” Eddie whispered back.</p>
<p>             “You don’t need to break into the front door,” said Mike. He pointed directly above them, and Eddie looked up. About ten feet above the snowy ground, there was a window, and when he squinted, he could see that it had been left just barely open, jutting out at the bottom a few inches more than the windows to either side of it. Someone must have left it cracked before break started, he thought. </p>
<p>             Then, he gulped. It was very high up. </p>
<p>             <em>Richie</em>, his mind said insistently. <em>Do it for Richie. </em></p>
<p>             “Okay,” Eddie said, and nodded, more to himself than to the others. “Okay. Mike, can you give me a boost?”</p>
<p>             “Will you be able to reach?” Mike asked. </p>
<p>             “Yes,” said Eddie, hoping he sounded more convincing than he felt. </p>
<p>             Mike wasn’t one to mince words, so he got down on his knees in the snow and Eddie climbed onto his shoulders. With a grunt, Mike stood up, and Eddie swayed from his perch, too high off the ground. Mike wasn’t that much taller than him, but it still felt dizzying to be up that high, with nothing secure to grab onto.</p>
<p>             And, of course, he wasn’t high enough to reach the window.</p>
<p>             “Okay,” Eddie whispered down to Mike. “I need to stand up, so stay as still as you can.”</p>
<p>             “Be careful,” was all Mike said in return. </p>
<p>             Eddie put one steadying hand on Mike’s head, and one on the wall in front of him, and tried to ignore his mother’s voice in the back of his head - <em>eddieyoucouldhurtyourselfareyouinsanegetdownfromthereyoucouldfallyoucoulddieyoucouldbeconcussededdiewatchoutwatchOUT </em>- and slowly, carefully, climbed up onto his feet so that he was standing on Mike’s shoulders. </p>
<p>             He swayed again, grasping at the stone wall for balance. He mustn’t fall, he mustn’t. Mike grunted below him, but gripped his ankles tightly. Eddie didn’t even look at Stan’s face, knowing that seeing him looking petrified would only make the whole thing worse. </p>
<p>             <em>Eddiegetdownfromthere!</em></p>
<p>             He was eye to eye with the windowsill, then, so he slowly pulled his hands away from the wall, and grasped the bottom of the window. Bending his knees a little to lower his center of gravity, he pulled at the window, and it cracked open another inch. Just that movement threw him off balance, and he had to hold onto the window to stay upright. Mike shifted his weight, and Eddie held his breath as they swayed. </p>
<p>             “C’mon,” Eddie said under his breath. He put one hand on the sill, the other on the window, and he pushed the two of them apart. This time the window budged just a little more, cracking open a few inches, half a foot, almost a foot at the bottom. Eddie almost fell, but he gripped the window for dear life, and heard Mike inhale sharply below him.</p>
<p>             “It’s fine,” Eddie whispered, half to Mike and Stan, and half to himself. He braced himself on the wall one last time, and gave the window one final, huge push, and it swung wide open. Eddie let out a breath, and then grabbed the sill with both his arms, and heaved. </p>
<p>             Mike let go of his legs, and Eddie almost shrieked, but he managed to swallow the scream and hold tight to the ledge. His legs kicked at the wall and found no purchase, and the sickly sensation of emptiness beneath him was temporarily overwhelming. He was going to fall, he was going to fall, he was going to fall. </p>
<p>             But no, holding on with one arm, he heaved himself up so that his chest rested on the ledge, then he wiggled forward till he was bent over, his whole torso in the window and his legs sticking out. There was nothing underneath the window on the inside, no ledge or desk to hold onto, but he could grip the wall and drag himself forward till, slowly but surely, he made his way fully inside, dropping to the ground a few feet below with all the dead weight of a sack of flour. For a moment, Eddie just waited, sprawled out on the floor, deep breathing. </p>
<p>             Funny, he should have been wheezing, but he didn’t feel the need to go for his inhaler at all. In fact, he felt exhilarated. </p>
<p>             Eddie slowly got to his feet and leaned out the window, giving a dumbfounded Stan and an exhausted Mike a wave. Then he stood back up, surveying the room he had landed in. It was a classroom, a Spanish classroom, based on the words that had yet to be erased from the blackboard. There was a sickly looking plant in the corner, probably sick due to the window being left open for the past week. Eddie glanced around him, then up into the corners, but he saw no cameras in the classroom, and he thanked God for small miracles. Then he lifted his hood up over his head and crept out into the hallway, the door squealing behind him. </p>
<p>             He recognized the front hall he was in, if only dimly in the pitch black of nighttime. He was just a few steps from the front office, and he made his way there with little difficulty, only tripping due to the darkness once, and catching himself before he sprawled on the ground. He walked up to the door, turned the handle, and-</p>
<p>             Nothing. The office was locked as well. </p>
<p>             “Motherfuck!” Eddie whispered to himself. “Shit-sucking, goddamn, mother-fucking-!”</p>
<p>             He kicked the door, and the latch unstuck with a click. Eddie pushed down on the handle again, and the door swung open. </p>
<p>             The front office was dim as well, but better lit than the hallway, with one front-facing window letting in the pale moonlight. Eddie made for the desk and tried to remember which drawer he’d seen Mr. Hill deposit the key in. He opened the top drawer and found nothing but paperclips and old post-it notes, then went through each drawer, methodically, till he found the keys, shiny and tempting, lying on the top of the bottom drawer.</p>
<p>             Before reaching out to them, Eddie hesitated.</p>
<p>             He hadn’t done anything thus far that would get him into real trouble. Kids broke into the school all the time, and frankly, if he left now, he wouldn’t be caught. Stan and Mike would probably be relieved, goody-two-shoes that they both were, and Eddie could get home before his mom was any wiser. He’d have Christmas Eve and Christmas with his family, then go to Stan’s for the last night of Chanukah on the 26th. He could go to school and live his life and not get in any trouble and just. Try to forget about Richie.</p>
<p>             But the idea of forgetting Richie, of letting Richie forget him, it made Eddie’s skin crawl. It made him want to just drop dead then and there. So, no. He couldn’t let it go. </p>
<p>             He reached out and grabbed the keys, which, in spite of the cold, felt shockingly warm in his hand, and he shut the drawer. He ran back into the Spanish classroom and carefully shut the squeaky door behind him. </p>
<p>             As he ran to the window, he stuffed the keys in his pocket, and then swung his legs out over the sill. Then, Eddie froze.</p>
<p>             Ten feet was an awful long way to drop, and if he landed badly…</p>
<p>             <em>Eddie-bearwhatareyoudoingyou’regoingtokillyourself!</em></p>
<p>             “Shut up, mom,” he muttered to himself, and without allowing himself to think of the danger, dropped down into the snowdrift below. </p>
<p>             Eddie landed hard on his feet, his ankles rolling as he made contact with the ground. He fell immediately to his hands and knees, his ankles throbbing, but he wasn’t in the kind of pain that made him feel like screaming out loud, so he looked up with a smile.</p>
<p>             “Got it,” he said.</p>
<p>             Stan blinked at him.</p>
<p>             “Who are you and what have you done with Eddie?” Stan asked. “You just jumped out of a window with stolen car keys, and-”</p>
<p>             “Be impressed later,” said Eddie. “We’ve got to get going.”</p>
<p>             They crept silently around the school to the parking lot, and when they arrived at the driver’s ed car, Mike pointed out another problem.</p>
<p>             “What are you going to do about the big yellow ‘Student Driver’ sign over our heads?” Mike asked. </p>
<p>             Eddie had no good answer to that. Sure enough, atop the car there was a neon sign that read “STUDENT DRIVER,” and as he had pointed out several times, it was clearly Christmas break. Someone would notice if there were a driver’s ed student out on the road.</p>
<p>             “Well,” said Stan thoughtfully. “We’re already breaking the rules.”</p>
<p>             He then walked clean away from them, and Eddie stared after him. For a moment, he wondered if Stan had simply decided to ditch them, but then he bent over and came back, now carrying a large stick that had fallen on the ground.</p>
<p>             “What are you-?” Eddie began, and then with a WHACK, Stan slammed the stick into the Student Driver sign, knocking it to the ground.</p>
<p>             “Holy shit,” Eddie said. “You could’ve hit the car.”</p>
<p>             “I play baseball,” said Stan, offended. The three of them stared at the sign on the ground for a second, then Stan looked to Eddie.</p>
<p>             “Well,” he said. “Are we going?”</p>
<p>             “We’re going,” Eddie agreed, and he unlocked the car and got in the driver’s side. Stan got in the front, and Mike slid into the backseat. Eddie stared out the windshield for a second. </p>
<p>             This was insane. He should go back. He should stop.</p>
<p>             He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine rolled over, too loud in the still morning silence. He turned on the windshield wipers and wiped the sticky-wet snow from the windows. </p>
<p>             “Okay,” said Eddie. “Okay. New York, here we come.”</p>
<p>            </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>             The first few hours, as the sun rose through the left-hand windows of their car while they drove South, were exhilarating. They were dead silent as they drove through the streets of Derry, but once they left city limits, a feeling of freedom began to permeate the car. They were <em>leaving Derry</em>, arguably the worst place in the world, and they weren’t stuck on a car ride with their parents. They were out, on their own, and as the sky began to lighten and the car began to warm up, the feeling grew downright intoxicating. </p>
<p>             They were <em>out</em>, they were <em>doing something</em>, and they were <em>free</em>. Eddie couldn’t help but grin as he checked his mirrors, and he caught Mike’s eye in the rearview, and saw that he was smiling as well. They cruised down interstate 95 towards Boston, and when Derry was far behind them, Eddie turned up the radio - not loud enough to be a distraction, but loud enough that it heightened the elation he felt like a bubble in his chest. </p>
<p>             This overwhelming feeling of freedom and high he was riding for having snuck out of town lasted all the way to the state border, at which point a few things happened simultaneously. Firstly, he realized that the car was low on gas. Secondly, he realized that he didn’t actually have Richie’s home address. Thirdly, he realized Stan was going to kill him over one of the first two revelations. And, lastly, Eddie realized that he was actually going to have to tell Richie why he’d driven seven hours in a light Christmas snowstorm with no license just to say ‘hi.’</p>
<p>             The bubble in Eddie’s chest punctured. He turned down the radio and thought to himself that he ought to best handle this problem one thing at a time.</p>
<p>             “Okay,” Eddie said. “Okay. Nobody panic, but we need to get gas.”</p>
<p>             “Why would we panic over that?” asked Stan, suspicious. </p>
<p>             “Because,” Eddie said, very pointedly keeping his voice cool and collected. “I do not have money for gas.”</p>
<p>             He could feel Stan and Mike’s eyes boring into the back of his neck, and he winced.</p>
<p>             “Do either of you want to spot me?” he asked.</p>
<p>             “Are you kidding me?” Stan asked. “Eddie, did you think any part of this plan through before you decided to steal a car?”</p>
<p>             “Um,” said Eddie. “Not really?”</p>
<p>             He looked through the front of the windshield at the mostly empty highway in front of him to avoid meeting anyone’s accusing gaze in the mirror. </p>
<p>             “Do you have any money?” Stan asked. </p>
<p>             It was a decent question. Eddie had, in fact, twenty dollars that his grandmother had sent him for Christmas, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew twenty dollars was not enough to get them to New York and back, especially not if they stopped at all to eat somewhere. And if they had any sort of car emergency-</p>
<p>             Well, maybe Eddie’s plan hinged too heavily on not getting into any emergencies. He was fairly certain his mom wouldn’t leave him to die, no matter how badly he’d fucked up, but that was about all he was sure of. And, in fact, he might prefer death to calling his mom from some gas station in New Hampshire, trying to explain what he’d done. </p>
<p>             But Eddie was in charge, for once. He’d come up with the plan and executed it, he’d broken into the high school and stolen a car, and he had to be like Bill, be fearless and cool and laugh in the face of danger, because if he lost his nerve, he knew for a fact that Mike and Stan would lose their nerve too.</p>
<p>             So, Eddie shook his hair out of his eyes and forced his voice to stay level. <em>Cool</em>.      </p>
<p>             “I can pay you back,” he said. “Do either of you have any cash on you?”</p>
<p>             He willed himself not to sound panicked, and he thought he did okay. At any rate, it sounded cool and level-headed to him. </p>
<p>             There was a long bout of silence in the car, with nothing but the whir of tires over asphalt, then at last, Stan sighed.</p>
<p>             “Yeah, I have cash on me,” he said. “But you owe me.”</p>
<p>             “I’ll pay you back,” Eddie said, trying not to be obvious just how relieved he was.</p>
<p>             “No,” said Stan. “You’ll owe me. Big time.”</p>
<p>             “I already owe you both for coming this far for, like, eternity,” Eddie said. “How deep in debt can I possibly go?”</p>
<p>             “I assure you, we’re going to find out,” Stan said darkly. Eddie carefully looked over his shoulder, changed lanes, and moved towards the nearest exit.</p>
<p>             “It’s worth it,” he said, more to himself than to Stan and Mike, silent in the backseat. </p>
<p>             The town they pulled into was tiny, barely a speck on the interstate, but it had a gas station and a McDonalds. Eddie pulled into the station and saw, at the pump adjacent, a cop. Fear fluttered in his stomach. He had had a growth spurt, but he still looked young for sixteen. Cops didn’t pull you over and demand to see your license for <em>looking</em> young, did they?</p>
<p>             A voice, not unlike Richie’s, took over in Eddie’s head.</p>
<p>             <em>Just walk like you own the place</em>, it said. <em>Confidence is the key to getting away with anything</em>. </p>
<p>             Eddie wasn’t sure when, if ever, Richie had said something like that to him, but he appreciated the advice anyway.</p>
<p>             Eddie held his head up high and walked past the police officer, trying not to let his hands shake lest they give him away for who he really was - a fraud, a lawbreaker, an idiot kid in over his head.</p>
<p>             He gave the bored looking woman at the checkout counter a ten-dollar-bill from Stan, muttered “Pump four,” and then ducked back out. It was freezing outside, and he rubbed his hands together. Even in gloves they were cold, but that was Maine for you, he supposed. He lifted the nozzle out of the pump and plugged it into his car, then waited. He refused to let himself glance over at the police officer, knowing the more attention he paid him, the guiltier he would look. </p>
<p>             The numbers on the gage ticked up maddeningly slowly. Eddie needed to be back on the road, to be moving. He tapped his toes, felt itchy, but nothing made the process speed up. Finally, finally, it clicked off, and he replaced the nozzle, and got back in the car. He felt conspicuous as all hell, and Stan had noticed, his eyes shifted between Eddie and the police car and back.</p>
<p>             “You don’t think he noticed, do you?” asked Stan, the anxiety clear in his voice.</p>
<p>             “No,” Eddie said, sounding more sure than he felt. </p>
<p>             “Noticed you two acting jumpy as hell, maybe,” Mike muttered. </p>
<p>             “I do not want to get arrested on a freaking felony charge,” Stan said.</p>
<p>             “No one is going to get arrested,” Mike said, his voice sure and calming. Eddie wished he could be so confident. </p>
<p>             The gravity of the situation was really hitting Eddie over and over again. They had gone way past “slap on the wrist” territory and had entered “serious consequences forever” land if they got caught. The only way out was to not get caught, so Eddie steeled himself, set his shoulders, and very carefully, obeying every law, pulled out of the gas station. </p>
<p>             Back out on the highway, he felt more confident, even though they were rapidly approaching the massive sprawl of Boston. Eddie was a good driver, and he was extraordinarily careful to move just a mile or two under the flow of traffic, to stay in the right hand lane, to be cautious beyond all measure so that nothing could go wrong. </p>
<p>             Shockingly, for a hundred or so miles, nothing did. This Eddie thought was extraordinary good luck, and possibly proof of a god, until he heard a sputter-flap coming from behind him to the left. </p>
<p>             His perfect score on his driver’s ed test in mind, he gripped the wheel firmly and turned on his hazard lights, slowly pulling onto the shoulder of the road, just as the car lilted hard to the left and began to screech against the highway. Eddie barely resisted the urge to let go of the wheel and cover his ears. Since Stan and Mike had no such responsibility, they both did just that, looking at Eddie with panicked questions in their faces. </p>
<p>             Once fully on the shoulder, Eddie threw the car into park and ran out and around to the rear left tire. Or, he supposed, the rear left rim, as the tire was nothing but a deflated flap of black hugging the rim at that point.</p>
<p>             “Oh no,” Eddie said.</p>
<p>             “Oh no?” Stan repeated. “Oh no? What happened?!”</p>
<p>             “Okay,” said Eddie. “Don’t freak out, but. We may have a flat tire.”</p>
<p>             Stan’s eyes bugged. But, to Eddie’s relief, he didn’t start screaming, so that was something.</p>
<p>             “Okay,” Mike said. “This is okay. Eddie?”</p>
<p>             And oh, but stolid, steadfast Mike couldn’t be looking to Eddie for the answers. That was too much, that was more than Eddie was prepared for, but he was in charge now. Be like Bill, he told himself, and nodded.</p>
<p>             “Hold on,” he said, and he unlocked the trunk. There was a huge first-aid kit, which went to show how much faith teachers had in the students of Derry High, and a jacket, and nothing else. Eddie felt a moment of panic - what if there was no tire? - but he held onto his head and took a deep breath. He pulled out the first aid kit and the jacket, then felt around the edges of the trunk until he found the panel over the spare tire slot. Eddie gave a tiny little plea to the universe, then pulled up the panel. </p>
<p>             Miracle of miracles, there was a spare tire. </p>
<p>             “Oh thank fuck,” Eddie said out loud. “There’s a spare!” he called up front. “But we’re going to have to buy a new tire at the nearest town. We can’t drive on a donut for long, it’s bad for the car.”</p>
<p>             “And when you say <em>we </em>have to buy a new tire,” Stan said tiredly. Eddie made an apologetic face. </p>
<p>             “I will pay you back,” he promised again. “If it takes till I’m thirty, I’ll pay you back.”</p>
<p>             “You’ll pay me back long before you’re thirty,” Stan said. “Okay, so, do you know how to change a tire?”</p>
<p>             “Um,” said Eddie. The honest answer was complicated. He’d read about how to change a tire in a textbook, he knew theoretically how to go about changing a tire, but he’d never done it in practice. Still, he was good with cars, good with his hands, so he said: “Yes.”</p>
<p>             Stan looked satisfied. He and Mike were out of the car, standing off in the grass and looking cold, so Eddie got right to it. He found the jack and began the process of lifting the car up, keeping his face turned toward the car so that they couldn’t see the panic in his eyes. The impossibly high stakes were just a little bit higher, because if he fucked up and the wheel flew off while they were going seventy miles an hour, people could die. There was no room for error. Even though he’d only been out of the warm car for a few minutes, Eddie felt chilled to the bone. He shivered, nearly catching his fingers between some of the enormous, heavy bits of metal he was working with, and vowed to be more careful.</p>
<p>             Luckily, removing a tire was a fairly intuitive process. Eddie carefully caught each and every screw as they fell from the tire, and placed them in a pile he made in the snow by his side. He wiggled the tire free with little difficulty, and set it on his other side, then stared at the frame. He wasn’t going to fuck this up, he was not going to fuck this up, he was certain that he wasn’t going to fuck this up. </p>
<p>             Eddie affixed the spare tire in just a few short minutes, then put the flat and the jack in the back of the car, replaced the panel, and put the bare contents of the trunk back in it.</p>
<p>             “You know, someone’s probably gonna notice that there’s a brand new tire on the car,” Mike said as Eddie walked back around to the front. “Like, I’m not trying to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s gonna be noticeable.”</p>
<p>             “I know,” said Eddie, miserably. “But what can we do? We can’t drive all the way to New York City and back on a spare tire, and we don’t exactly have a backup plan.”</p>
<p>             “We could go home, fess up, and hope they give us a light sentence?” said Stan, not hopefully.</p>
<p>             Eddie climbed in the car and slammed the door shut, then turned the car back on, grateful to hear the familiar rumble of the engine turning over. He waited for Stan and Mike to shut their doors as well, then nodded.</p>
<p>             “That’ll never work,” he said. “Not in Derry. We’d probably get stuck in prison for life if we confess. We have to stick to the plan, and we’ll wipe down all our fingerprints when we leave, and if you think about it, they should really be grateful that we’re getting a new tire for this crappy car anyway.”</p>
<p>             “I really don’t think anyone has ever been grateful for a car getting stolen,” Stan said. But he sighed and leaned his forehead against the window, and waved his hand forward. “Okay, all right, let’s keep going. But note that I said this was a terrible idea!”</p>
<p>             “So noted,” Eddie said, and he pulled back into traffic. He braced himself for a sudden crunch, the keening sound of a car accident, of horns honking in absolute disbelief, but none of that came. Instead, he smoothly accelerated back up to the flow of traffic, and breathed out slowly through his nose, settling his nervous lungs. </p>
<p>             Eventually, Eddie turned the radio back up. The opening horn to Jump Around blared through the car, and Eddie found himself lightly nodding along. It was better than the Christmas music blasting on every other station, because Christmas reminded him of why he was there and what he had to do.</p>
<p>             What, he wondered, was he even going to say to Richie? Supposing he still didn’t remember Eddie, how could Eddie convince him to get into a car and go to Maine with them? He couldn’t very well kidnap Richie - Richie was loud, and that would get them caught and arrested for sure. But he couldn’t just leave without doing anything. And, on the other hand (other other hand? How many hands did Eddie have in which to hold too many problems?) maybe, if Eddie told Richie the truth about how he felt, it was better to let Richie forget, better to leave him with - well, not with his memories, but with some fondness for his childhood. </p>
<p>             It was a thorny problem, and Eddie had told himself that the long car ride would give him time to work it out, but he was a few states closer to New York and no closer to figuring out what in the world to say to Richie Tozier. Would he remember Eddie and make fun of him? Would he remember Eddie and be disgusted by him? Mad at him? Would he really not recognize the three of them on his doorstep, send them all home empty handed?</p>
<p>             Eddie couldn’t even dream up a happy ending for himself, but there was still a thick stoicism in the base of his spine that told him he had to try. </p>
<p>             They took the merger for the first sign that directed them towards New York City by name, and while they were on the ramp, Eddie made nervous, excited eye contact with Stan, who, clearly against his will, looked a little excited as well. The snow had stopped falling further north, though it was still piled up by the side of the road. Eddie and Stan grinned at each other, excited, little kid grins, and then turned to give the same smile to Mike. Mike, beaming, leaned forward and turned the radio up. </p>
<p>             “<em>Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weeeeird</em>,” Mike sang, and Eddie laughed. There was so much trouble behind and ahead, but for the moment, he felt good and free. </p>
<p>             “<em>We’re all alright, we’re all alright!</em>” Eddie and Stan had both joined in. Eddie had learned the song from Richie, but the thought didn’t sting the way it would have a week ago. He rolled down the window and stuck his arm out, letting wind rip through the car to wake them up. A mom in a station wagon gave them a dirty look as she drove by, and Eddie felt the excitement in his chest inflating. </p>
<p>             They pulled off at the next town, and luckily there was a mechanic right off the main road. Eddie paused before getting out, wondering how best to not get scammed. Mike looked the oldest, but there was always a chance of running into someone racist, especially as far out from the city as they were. So Eddie turned to Stan and said:</p>
<p>             “You’ve gotta get the price down.”</p>
<p>             “Is this because I’m Jewish?” Stan asked. He didn’t sound offended, just genuinely bemused. Eddie rolled his eyes.</p>
<p>             “It’s because I look like I’m thirteen, dipshit,” he said, his voice going embarrassingly squeaky at the end, but proving his point nicely. Stan rolled his eyes, but willingly got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. </p>
<p>             Eddie didn’t hear the whole conversation with the mechanic, but he saw the mechanic laughing at Stan, then looking sorry for him. </p>
<p>             Stan got back in the car with a huff, then looked at Eddie.</p>
<p>             “Do you have <em>any </em>money?” he asked. </p>
<p>             “I’ve got twenty dollars,” Eddie said. “Why?”</p>
<p>             “Because we can just barely afford a new tire if we install it ourselves,” Stan said. </p>
<p>             “I’ve got twenty-five bucks,” Mike said, and Stan nodded.</p>
<p>             “That’s good,” he said. “You can do it, right Eddie?”</p>
<p>             Eddie didn’t really trust himself to change the tire that they were going to be driving on for the rest of the day and night, but as there was no other option, he nodded.</p>
<p>             “We’re so fucked,” Stan said, apropos of nothing, and then got out and slammed the car door again. Eddie got out too, and the mechanic stared at him.</p>
<p>             “You old enough to be driving this thing, kid?” he asked, and Eddie gave him a sour look.</p>
<p>             “I’m sixteen,” he said, a little sourly.</p>
<p>             “If you say so,” said the mechanic. He disappeared into the back, and Stan sighed.</p>
<p>             “I don’t think me doing the bartering did us any good at all,” he said. </p>
<p>             “It was worth a shot,” Eddie said. “And we made it this far. Maybe we’ve used up all our bad luck.”</p>
<p>             “Oh, man, why would you say that?” asked Mike, now standing up and stretching as well. “There’s not even any wood to knock on!”</p>
<p>             “He’s right, we definitely haven’t used up our bad luck yet,” Stan said. “Might’ve used up our good luck in getting out of town, though.”</p>
<p>             “Thanks for all the confidence in me,” said Eddie, rolling his eyes. “Relax, okay? We’ll get this sorted out, then we’ll be on our way.”</p>
<p>             He didn’t add that, once they got into New York City, he wasn’t sure where on their way was, because that was a problem for future Eddie to deal with.</p>
<p>             The mechanic came back, rolling a huge tire out to them, and he saw the trepidation on Eddie’s face. He looked from Eddie to Stan to the burgeoning purple storm clouds in the East, and he sighed.</p>
<p>             “Tell you what,” said the man. “How bout I put this on, no charge? And you kids pass on the good fortune to someone else. It is Christmas, after all.”</p>
<p>             Eddie felt the lightness in his chest glow even brighter, and he beamed at the man.</p>
<p>             “Thank you,” he said fervently, and Stan and Mike did the same. </p>
<p>             It was easy, sometimes, to remember that the whole world wasn’t as bad as Derry, Maine.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>             By the time they could see skyscrapers in the distance, Eddie knew his time was more than up. So he cleared his throat, turned down the radio, and admitted:  </p>
<p>             “We may have another problem.”</p>
<p>             He couldn’t turn his eyes away from the road just then. He had to carefully navigate the many off ramps to get onto the island the city was on, and he couldn’t afford to lose focus. Stan’s voice in reply was deadly sharp.</p>
<p>             “What problem?”</p>
<p>             “I don’t exactly have Richie’s address,” Eddie admitted. Stan swore. Eddie didn’t look in the rearview mirror to meet Mike’s accusing gaze.</p>
<p>             “What do you plan to do without his address?!” Stan asked. “It’s only the biggest city in the world, were you gonna go door to door?”</p>
<p>             “I was gonna get a phonebook,” Eddie said. “And look up his mom.”</p>
<p>             “Oh, this just gets better and better,” Stan said sarcastically. “You’re going to look them up in the phone book? The New York City phonebook?”</p>
<p>             “Why is that so ridiculous?” Eddie asked.</p>
<p>             “Eddie, they might not even be listed yet,” Mike said. “They only moved a few months ago.”</p>
<p>             Eddie felt his hope curdling in his stomach. The darkening sky was starting to spit out the odd flurry of snow, and even though it was Christmas Eve, traffic was unbelievable, unlike anything Eddie had ever seen in Maine. He was a moment too slow stepping back on the gas to move a few feet forward, and the car behind him let out an earsplitting honk. Eddie edged the car forward, and shook his head.</p>
<p>             “I’ll call 411,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”</p>
<p>             “What if they’re unlisted?” Stan asked. </p>
<p>             “They weren’t in Derry,” Eddie said.</p>
<p>             “Still,” said Stan. “What do we do if we can’t find him?”</p>
<p>             “We’re gonna be able to find him, one way or another,” Eddie said. “His mom’s work has to have their address, so we’ll find it there if we have to-”</p>
<p>             “You know where his mom works?” Stan asked.</p>
<p>             “Well, no,” Eddie admitted. “But I know she works for a real estate agency, and there can only be so many of those in the city.”</p>
<p>             Stan and Mike groaned in unison.</p>
<p>             “Eddie,” Stan said, and he didn’t go on, but Eddie could hear the “<em>You’re so stupid!</em>” in his voice. Eddie cringed, bumped the car forward, and turned to glare.</p>
<p>             “Look, you guys didn’t have to come with me, but you chose to,” he said. “Stop acting like I dragged you along, and if you don’t like my plan, help me come up with a better one!”</p>
<p>             “I’m not sure there is a better plan for finding someone in New York with nothing but a name,” Stan said. “So we’ll go with yours. First off, how do you intend to find a phonebook, anyway?”</p>
<p>             When in doubt, Eddie liked to imagine that his lost friends were still giving him advice. And he could imagine Ben’s advice loud and clear in his ears at the moment.</p>
<p>             “First, we check the library,” he said. </p>
<p>             Eddie had expected that it would be difficult to find the library, that he’d have to stop at some kitschy tourist shop on the edge of the city and buy a map that they really couldn’t afford, but then, Eddie had a knack for finding his way. Rather than follow his plan, Eddie drove through the cramped and grid-like streets for only half an hour before finding a huge building that he recognized from Ghostbusters as the public library. </p>
<p>             The new problem (there was always a new problem) was that he couldn’t find parking.</p>
<p>             “Okay,” said Eddie. “Stan, can you drive while I go in?”</p>
<p>             “What?” Stan asked. He couldn’t have looked more surprised and alarmed if Eddie had asked him to shoot himself.</p>
<p>             “Look, I don’t know where parking is, and even if I did, we couldn’t afford it,” Eddie reasoned. “So I need you to just drive in circles until I’m done.”</p>
<p>             “But I- I haven’t even taken driver’s ed yet!” Stan protested.</p>
<p>             “I could do it,” Mike said, though he sounded uncertain.</p>
<p>             “Yeah?” Eddie asked.</p>
<p>             “I drive the truck out around the farm sometimes,” Mike said. “I haven’t taken driver’s ed either, though.”</p>
<p>             “That’s fine,” Eddie assured him. “You know how to drive, so it’ll be fine. Just keep going round the block, and I’ll be out soon.”</p>
<p>             “It’s Christmas eve,” Mike said dubiously, looking up at the library. They were stalled in front of the great front steps, and taking up space where a fire truck was meant to go. Not exactly a great long-term solution. “It’s probably closed.”</p>
<p>             “Might not be,” Eddie said. “This is New York, after all. The city that never sleeps, and all that.”</p>
<p>             “Bet the city that never sleeps is still mostly goy,” Stan said. Eddie had no idea what he meant, so he climbed out of the car, handed the keys to Mike, and very carefully did not look back as he heard the car start and pull away. </p>
<p>             <em>They could leave you here</em>, a mean voice in his head whispered, and Eddie swatted the voice away. Mike and Stan weren’t about to abandon him in New York. </p>
<p>             Eddie mounted the steep stone steps, one hand brushing against the side of his inhaler, for luck maybe, luck enough that he wouldn’t have to use it again and feel the slimy drip of medicine down his throat. He reached the door, and thought he saw darkness inside. He let his stomach plunge for a moment, hopeless, then he reached out and grabbed the handle anyway. </p>
<p>             The door opened. </p>
<p>             Eddie all but skipped inside. </p>
<p>             Even though it was a tourist attraction, the library was quiet inside, which Eddie supposed he should’ve expected. The vaulted ceiling towered above him, and the only sounds were whispers and rustles, the snapping of book covers and the thud of stamps working at the front desk. Immediately, Eddie felt safer than he had all day, sheltered. Libraries were always a home to losers, lowercase or uppercase L.</p>
<p>             He walked up to the counter, hyper aware of the snow on his shoes and trying not to drip excessively, and cleared his throat. A kind-faced woman with enormous glasses smiled up at him.</p>
<p>             “How can I help you?”</p>
<p>             “I’m looking for - okay, this is going to sound crazy, but - I’m looking for a phone book? For New York City?”</p>
<p>             The librarian raised her eyebrows, but didn’t look that stunned.</p>
<p>             “Do you know which borough you’re looking for?” she asked. Eddie stared at her blankly, before remembering that yes, right, New York was divided up into Manhattan… Queens… and some others, he thought. He really hadn’t come prepared.</p>
<p>             “No,” he said. “The last name I’m looking for starts with a T?” </p>
<p>             She smiled at him, only a little condescendingly, and walked around the row of counters, beckoning Eddie to follow after her. She led him through the reference section, bent down, and came back up to the counter with an enormous phone book.</p>
<p>             “The ‘T’s,” she announced, and Eddie stared at it. Just the ‘T’s? It was huge. But he swallowed, nodded, and thanked her kindly, then started digging through it. He got to the TOs with some confidence - Tozier couldn’t be a very common last name, could it? Richie and his family were the only ones Eddie had ever met - but he was shocked to see that there were <em>dozens </em>of Toziers in New York City. His eyes flicked to the bottom, looking for a “Wentworth” - no such luck. He then looked up for a “Maggie,” but there was no “Maggie” either - there was, however, a “Margaret,” and he supposed it was silly for him to not have looked for that in the first place. He copied the number down carefully onto his hand, then asked the librarian if he could use the phone.</p>
<p>             “Please?” Eddie said, raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes slightly, trying to look young, for once. The trick worked on his mom and his teachers, so he wasn’t shocked when the librarian warmly agreed and led him into the back.</p>
<p>             Eddie dialed the number - no long-distance charges here, since he was making a local call, for once - and held his breath while it rang. </p>
<p>             “Hello?” a woman said - an unfamiliar woman’s voice, Eddie realized with dismay, but he ploughed on just in case.</p>
<p>             “Hi,” Eddie said. “Um, is Richie Tozier there?”</p>
<p>             “Wrong number,” the woman said. “There’s no Richie living here.”</p>
<p>             Eddie didn’t even get to say “Wait” before she had hung up on him, and when the librarian returned, he was standing stock still, clutching the phone and looking devastated.</p>
<p>             “Oh, sweetie,” said the librarian. “What is it?”</p>
<p>             “I’m just,” Eddie said, thickly, fighting back the irrational tears that seemed to come all too easily these days. “I’m just having trouble finding my friend. He moved here recently, but I guess they’re not in the phonebook yet.”</p>
<p>             “I can look,” the librarian offered. “Sometimes having a second set of eyes helps.”</p>
<p>             Eddie was sure he hadn’t missed it, but he humored her. </p>
<p>             “I’m looking for Richie Tozier,” he said.</p>
<p>             What he did not expect, was for her eyes to narrow, her sweet voice to grow clipped, and her whole face to turn harsh and angry. It was the way plenty of adults looked at the mention of Richie, but still unexpected here.</p>
<p>             “Richie Tozier?” she repeated. “Tall kid, curly hair, glasses?”</p>
<p>             “That’s him!” Eddie said. “You know him?”</p>
<p>             “Yeah, I know him,” she said sourly. “He still owes us nearly a thousand dollars in damages.”</p>
<p>             Eddie stifled laughter.</p>
<p>             “What did he do?” he asked, fighting to keep his face grave.</p>
<p>             “He damaged some of the old books in our collection while on a field trip with his school,” she said. “But I knew from the moment he walked in here that he was a no-good- why are you smiling?”</p>
<p>             “Sorry,” Eddie said. “I’m sorry. “It’s just been a while since I heard him get scolded, that’s all.”</p>
<p>             “I imagine this sort of thing happens to him quite often, hmm?” she asked, and Eddie nodded.</p>
<p>             “All the time, miss,” he said, and tried not to sound overly fond.</p>
<p>             “Hmph,” she said. “Well, I can’t exactly just give you a minor’s address…” she began to trail off, and Eddie could tell, he was certain that she wanted to help him, so he kept pushing.</p>
<p>             “What’s the name of his school?” he asked lightly. “That couldn’t hurt to tell me, could it?”</p>
<p>             “I suppose not,” she said. “The school would be closed for winter, so you’d have to go home and wait to call when they were open again.”</p>
<p>             “I don’t mind waiting,” lied Eddie. He had no intention of waiting.</p>
<p>             “Well, he goes to Robert Gray High School, in Brooklyn,” she said. </p>
<p>             “Thank you,” Eddie said. He handed the phone back to her and was nearly vibrating with excitement as he moved toward the door. “Thank you so much!”</p>
<p>             “Tell him when you see him that he still does owe the library!” she called after him, but Eddie was gone, tearing out the door into the main library, and then out into the cold winter air, down the steps and towards the street.</p>
<p>             He needed to wait only a minute or two before he started to get nervous again. It was a grid, after all, so surely Mike hadn’t gotten lost. He hoped not, anyway. But once fifteen minutes had past and Eddie was cold down to the bone and there was still no driver’s ed car, he started to get really anxious. His lungs felt weak and brittle, like they might soon freeze and crumble into flecks of ice and snow. He gripped his inhaler, but made himself promise not to use it, not again, not while he could still draw in thin, cold, winter-and-diesel scented breath.</p>
<p>             Finally, Mike pulled up to the curb. He must have seen Eddie, or else he wouldn’t have stopped, but he and Stan were looking straightforward, looking haggard and lifeless. </p>
<p>             Eddie ran around the car and threw open the driver’s door before Mike had a chance to open it for himself.</p>
<p>             “What the hell, man?” Eddie asked. “Where have you been?”</p>
<p>             “About that,” said Mike as he climbed out and slid into the backseat. “We may have a problem.”</p>
<p>             “What kind of problem?” Eddie asked. “We already have plenty, we don’t need more.”</p>
<p>             “Yeah, well-”</p>
<p>             “Mike hit a car!” Stan squeaked out. </p>
<p>             “You what?!” Eddie cried. He turned all the way around in the seat to stare at Mike, who held up his hands.</p>
<p>             “It was an accident, obviously!” he said. “They just stopped so fast, and I barely bumped their rear end, just chipped the paint, <em>maybe</em>, but the guy got out and started screaming at me and then the light changed so I kinda, sorta, ran for it.”</p>
<p>             “Did he get the plate numbers?” Eddie asked.</p>
<p>             “I don’t know,” Mike said.</p>
<p>             “So, probably,” Stan added. </p>
<p>             “Okay,” Eddie said. “Okay. So. We should go <em>now</em>.”</p>
<p>             “What’s the point?” Stan asked. “They’re gonna run the plates and when they call the police station in Derry, they’re gonna check, and realize the car was gone, and realize that we’re gone because our parents have definitely called the police by now-!”</p>
<p>             “Enough!” Eddie said, cutting Stan off in the middle of his rant, working himself up. He signalled left, looked over his shoulder, and slid smoothly out into traffic. He could follow signs to Brooklyn easily enough, he thought, so long as he wasn’t distracted.</p>
<p>             “Look,” Eddie said, his voice softer, calmer. “There is literally nothing we can do but hope at this point. We can’t make it back to Derry in time to stop anything. ALl we can do is keep going with the plan.”</p>
<p>             Stan huffed next to him, but did not argue. </p>
<p>             “Did you get his address?” Mike asked while Eddie drove.</p>
<p>             “No,” Eddie said, and both Stan and Mike made noises of disappointment and disbelief. “I did get his school, though, and I’m gonna go there and find his name in the directory.”</p>
<p>             “We’re breaking into another school?” Stan asked, and Eddie bobbed his head in a nod. </p>
<p>             “Looks like,” he said. </p>
<p>             “This day just keeps getting better and better,” Stan said.</p>
<p>             Eddie had never been to New York City before, not even on the end of middle school field trip that everyone else went on but his mom had barred him from, but he had no trouble finding his way to Brooklyn. Once he got there (and it was easy to tell where they were, from all the signs in restaurants proudly declaring each place was “Brooklyn’s Finest”) it was a simple matter of stopping in front of a bodega to ask the man inside where Robert Gray high school was, and then follow his thickly accented instructions deeper into the heart of the city. </p>
<p>             As it was now well into the afternoon on Christmas Eve, the gas station was abandoned, but not as abandoned as Eddie would have liked. There were still cars outside, and a light was on inside the front entrance, like a lonely janitor or office worker was still in there, working through the holiday. Eddie swore under his breath, fingers drumming nervously on the steering wheel.</p>
<p>             His throat felt tight.</p>
<p>             “What’s the plan?” Stan asked, and God, but it was still strange being the one in charge. It should’ve been Bill, or Ben, or <em>Richie</em>, but there was nobody left but them, and Eddie was in charge now. </p>
<p>             “Does it look like there’s an alarm here?” Eddie asked. Stan had good eyes for that sort of thing, and he scanned the building in response. </p>
<p>             “I can’t see anything, but there might be,” he said. “There’s definitely cameras over the front door.”</p>
<p>             “Shit,” Eddie said. “Okay, let’s go around and see if they left any windows open here.”</p>
<p>             “No offense, Eddie, but I’m not boosting you up into a window here,” Mike said.</p>
<p>             “Am I too heavy?” Eddie asked, bemused. He hadn’t thought Mike was any more uncomfortable than him, but Mike just shook his head.</p>
<p>             “No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that there is a much better chance of getting caught here than there was back home, and I’m willing to do a lot, but I’m not about to get arrested today.”</p>
<p>             Eddie was mollified.</p>
<p>             “Fair enough,” he said. “You can move into the driver’s seat and drive away if someone comes up to you.”</p>
<p>             “You want me to drive again after last time?” Mike asked, and Eddie nodded.</p>
<p>             “You’re doing your best,” he said. “I trust you.”</p>
<p>             Mike looked so grateful and proud that Eddie almost didn’t feel bad for omitting the fact that there was literally no other option.</p>
<p>             Sure enough, around the back of the building, there was a first story window that had been left cracked open, and inside that window, it appeared that the lights were off. He stepped out of the car, the new dusting of snow muffling his footsteps as he crossed the grounds and made his way up to the window. These windows, rather than pushing out, slid up and down, so it was easy enough for Eddie to slide the window up as high as he could reach, then heave himself over the ledge and into the building. </p>
<p>             He glanced out the window as soon as he was in, and saw Mike in the driver’s seat, the car idling, occasionally spitting out a gust of smoke from its rear end, and he felt a little comforted to know that it was there. </p>
<p>             Then, Eddie turned around. He’d climbed into a classroom, yet again, but this time it was harder to determine what class it was for. The classroom was mostly bare, the posters that were hanging were all about “being unique” and “standing up to bullies,” and the desks were arranged in four-desk clumps all around the room rather than facing the blackboard. Eddie picked his way through the clumps of desks and jiggled the handle of the door, fearing for a moment if was locked, but then opening it with a loud squeak. </p>
<p>             Eddie slipped out into the hallway and immediately fell onto his ass. He slid backwards and cracked his head on the floor, hard. Tears smarted in his eyes as he slowly sat up, blinking in pain. The floor felt slick under his hands, like it had just been waxed, which, he realized slowly, as he listened to a distant thrum, perhaps it just had been. He climbed carefully to his feet, and began to walk, quickly, but with intention, watching his feet to make sure he didn’t slip again, in the opposite direction from the humming noise, so as to avoid the janitor that was apparently forced to work on Christmas Eve. </p>
<p>             It was slow going over the slippery floors, but Eddie found his way to the lighted section of the school with little difficulty. Once he was in the area where the lights were turned on, he had to be more careful, creeping around corners and scanning ahead to be sure he wasn’t about to run into anyone, but he was already so on edge that his senses were all running on high alert anyway. </p>
<p>             He picked his way down the hall, almost but not quite tiptoeing. He figured if the janitor was waxing the floors he wouldn’t hear anything else, but he didn’t want to push his luck.</p>
<p>             Unfortunately, he didn’t know this high school. Still, all high schools were set up in similar ways, and Eddie figured the office had to be near the front entrance, on the first floor. He hoped, anyway. When he found a shaft of light coming through the side wall, he hurried forward to see the pair of big glass doors that he had seen when they were in the front of the school. Which meant he had at least successfully found the front of the school to orient himself, and from there he just had to find the office… and then find Richie’s address, and find the house from there, and somehow convince him to go on a road trip with strangers. Not an incredibly tall to-do list. </p>
<p>             Eddie began trying doors, set in between walls of lockers. The first few led to music classrooms with basses and bassoons still propped up in the corners. One led to an office, but it was the principal’s office, and there were no records kept in there. He just needed to find the administrative office, and pray that there were no security cameras there. </p>
<p>             He shouldered open another door, wincing at the loud squeal the hinges made as he did, and looked around. This was an administrative office, he’d bet his life on it. Four desks pushed up against each other in the middle with family pictures on them, filing cabinets lining the walls, and as Eddie flicked on the light, it threw into relief the small nurse’s station in the back of the room, one cot and a basket full of bandaids. </p>
<p>             “<em>Richie’s probably been here</em>,” Eddie thought to himself. He was always getting scraped up and going to the nurse’s office, skipping gym or actually participating and promptly getting concussed. The thought was overwhelming, pushing against the edges of his chest in a way both exhilarating and painful. Richie had been here, where Eddie stood, and Eddie was so close to seeing him again. </p>
<p>             He stepped up to the nearest filing cabinet and began to rifle through it. The first one contained detention reports. The second drawer also contained detention reports. He moved a little ways down, opened a new cabinet, and picked through the pages in it. </p>
<p>             Eddie was methodical, but impatient. Every second the car idled outside was more gas than they could afford. The later it got, the better the chances were of Eddie getting seen by a janitor on his way out. He had to go faster, yet at the same time, he couldn’t allow himself to speed up for fear he might miss something in his haste. He thumbed through the folders - in school suspensions, now - and prayed he might see the name TOZIER printed atop a file so that he could get the information and get out.</p>
<p>             It took Eddie actually abandoning the filing cabinets and moving onto the desks to find it. The school directory. It was printed like a much more reasonably sized phone book and stuck in the bottom drawer of the second desk, and Eddie whipped it out with an unthinking crow of success. He couldn’t help but celebrate a little. He’d done it!</p>
<p>             He flipped through the directory to the T’s, and there found TOZIER, RICHARD with a phone number that Eddie recognized and an address not far from there. Eddie realized he had no pen and paper on him, so he grabbed a pen off the desk and scribbled the address onto his left hand. He closed the directory and was in the process of shoving it back in the drawer when he heard a noise come from behind him.</p>
<p>             “Ahem.”</p>
<p>             Eddie froze stock still at the sound of the woman’s voice. He turned slowly to see an older woman in a polo and khakis staring him down with her eyebrows knit in the middle, looking very unfriendly indeed. Worse, she had a walkie talkie strapped to her hip, a glowing red light on it indicating that it was on. </p>
<p>             “Who are you?” she asked. </p>
<p>             “Um,” Eddie said. He thought as fast as he could, but still he stammered over his answer. “I’m - I’m a student here. A recent transfer, and I was out buying Christmas gifts for my parents? And I realized I’d forgotten my address, so I snuck in here to look it up.”</p>
<p>             It was an awful lie, and the woman did not look convinced in the slightest.</p>
<p>             “Great,” she said flatly. “But I asked who you are, not what you were doing.”</p>
<p>             Eddie panicked. The directory was right there, and she’d know there was no Eddie Kaspbrak attending this school. More to the point, giving out his real name was just <em>asking </em>to get arrested. So-</p>
<p>             “Richie Tozier?” Eddie said. </p>
<p>             Another stupid lie. The woman’s eyes narrowed.</p>
<p>             “Oh, I know Richie Tozier,” she said. “Funny, did you get contacts?”</p>
<p>             “Yup,” said Eddie, his voice high and squeaky, knowing he was caught in his ridiculous lie but unable to give it up.</p>
<p>             “And you shrunk a foot,” she said. “Very impressive.”</p>
<p>             “Maybe you’re thinking of someone else?” Eddie suggested.</p>
<p>             “All the staff at this school know Richie Tozier pretty well,” she said. “He ends up in this office a lot. And you are a far cry from Richie Tozier.” She pulled over a chair that squealed horribly on the floor and sat down, arms crossed. “Now why don’t you tell me who you really are and why you’re here?”</p>
<p>             “Um,” Eddie said. “The truth?”</p>
<p>             “That would be my preference, yes.”</p>
<p>             “Okay,” Eddie said. “The truth is that I’m a friend of Richie’s from his old school and I came down to New York to look for him but I didn’t know his address so I went to the library to look for a phonebook and they said he went to school here so I went to the directory to find his address because I have to see him tonight.”</p>
<p>             The woman stared him down with something that Eddie thought might be sympathy. But then-</p>
<p>             “That’s a terrible lie, kid. And I’m afraid I’m gonna have to call your parents.”</p>
<p>             “You can’t do that,” Eddie said, stepping backwards.</p>
<p>             “If you don’t give me your parents’ number, I’m calling the police,” the woman said. Eddie stared her down, pleading, then his eyes flicked to the door. </p>
<p>             He did already have the address.</p>
<p>             Eddie bolted for the door and when the woman reached out to grab him, he slid under her arms, flying across the waxed hallway and sliding to the opposite side. He scrambled to his feet and ran, slipping occasionally but not falling again. He heard a thud and a cry of pain behind him, but he didn’t turn around to look at where the woman had fallen, not in case she got up again.</p>
<p>             Eddie realized his mistake as he was running, seeing the almost imperceptible footprints in the waxy shine of the floors, but it was helpful, as he could follow his way back through the halls, into the classroom, and then he jumped out the window, not bothering to close it behind him.</p>
<p>             He sprinted across the lawn, and thought idly that his lungs weren’t bothering him at all in spite of all the running, and then he threw open the door to the backseat and slammed it shut as soon as he was in.</p>
<p>             “Drive, drive, drive!” he shouted at Mike. Mike, unlike Stan, was not the type to demand a thousand questions, so he threw the car into drive and peeled out of the street the school was on, hurrying down and turning away from it. </p>
<p>             “What happened?” Stan demanded.</p>
<p>             “Got caught,” Eddie said. “Almost got arrested. Let’s not think too hard about it. I got the address.”</p>
<p>             “Amazing,” Stan said, a little sarcastically. “Do we know how to get there?”</p>
<p>             “I can figure it out,” Eddie said. “Right now let’s just drive for a minute, get her off our tail.”</p>
<p>             “I don’t think she’s following us,” Mike said, glancing in the rearview mirror. But he caught sight of Eddie’s face, and nodded. “Right,” he said. “I’ll keep driving.”</p>
<p>             It had gotten dark while Eddie was digging through records in the high school, and the streetlights were on, casting a hazy orange glow over everything. Mike didn’t drive far before pulling over onto the side of the road and giving Eddie a questioning look. Eddie got out and switched him spots, though he was privately tired of driving. It had been too long of a day.</p>
<p>             Still, Eddie held out his hand in front of him and read the smudged address there, just barely legible. It took him hardly any time to find the street he was looking for, and then it was just a matter of watching the numbers on the sides of the brownstones tick down until he was in front of a nondescript townhouse, like every other, but one with the same address Eddie had been looking for.</p>
<p>             This was it.</p>
<p>             Eddie swallowed hard.</p>
<p>             “That’s his place?” Stan asked, and Eddie nodded. His throat was turning to a pinhole again, but he wasn’t going to touch his inhaler, not then. He was strong enough for that.</p>
<p>             “I’ll go up,” Eddie said. “And we’ll see you guys in- in a minute, yeah?”</p>
<p>             Stan and Mike nodded, dead silent. The sound of the car door opening was too loud in the silence of the night, and the snow was falling in heavy clumps. Eddie slammed the door shut and winced at the sound, then began crunching up the path to Richie’s house. He thought he could hear carolers singing in the distance, but it might have been someone’s TV. </p>
<p>             Eddie’s heart thudded painfully against his ribcage. He was standing just in front of the door, and Richie was on the other side of it, and though he’d had all day, he still didn’t know what to say to him. Still, he couldn’t just stand in the snow all night. So, he thought to himself, <em>don’t be a coward</em>, and then he knocked on the door, three sharp raps against the wood. </p>
<p>             He only waited for a minute, but the show was falling so thickly that it was enough to start piling up on his head and melt onto his cheeks. He hadn’t worn proper boots or anything, so the cold was seeping through his clothes in no time, and he was shivering when the door opened.</p>
<p>             Bathed in warm light, Richie stood on the other side of the door, looking down at Eddie with furrowed brows. There was no light of recognition behind his eyes, no sign of anything other than vague, haughty annoyance. </p>
<p>             “Can I help you?” he asked. </p>
<p>             “I’m-” Eddie said. He thought he had been prepared for this, for Richie to see him and feel nothing, remember nothing, but it hurt, it ripped through his lungs like sandpaper. “Richie, it’s me.”</p>
<p>             Richie looked down through his glasses, the light glinting off them so that he couldn’t see Richie’s warm brown eyes.</p>
<p>             “Do I know you?” he asked, sounding bored rather than doubtful.</p>
<p>             And it pushed Eddie over the edge.</p>
<p>             Suddenly, Eddie was crying, the weight of the terrible day crashing into him. He’d stolen a car for this boy, broken into buildings, ran away from home on Christmas Eve, and there was every chance that when he went home he was going to get locked up in a juvenile detention center over a boy that didn’t even remember his face. Eddie hadn’t thought everything would go so wrong so fast, that he would come so far and it wouldn’t even matter. He couldn’t fight the tears from spilling over, nor could he stop the pathetic bubble of a wail that rose up from his throat.</p>
<p>             “Jesus!” Richie said. “Hey, fuck, hold on, are you okay? Come on inside, dude, before your eyes freeze over or something.”</p>
<p>             Richie took Eddie’s arm, and then looked alarmed when Eddie cried harder. He pulled Eddie into a warm and familiar looking living room. Eddie couldn’t see well behind the blur in his eyes, but he recognized the same bookshelves and art and even the same big TV that had been in the Tozier household in Maine as well. Richie tugged Eddie around onto the sectional sofa and sat down next to him, turned so that they were facing each other, skinny knees bumping up against one another. </p>
<p>             “What’s up, dude?” Richie asked. “You’re, like freezing. Are you, I don’t know, homeless or something? Are you lost?”</p>
<p>             “No,” Eddie choked out. “No, I was looking for you, but it’s too late, and it doesn’t matter, and you’re just going to forget again, and there was no fucking point in any of this!”</p>
<p>             “I don’t know you,” Richie said, but he sounded uncertain. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and Eddie could see his eyes again, hugely magnified. “Do we-? I’m sorry, do we go to school together?”</p>
<p>             “We used to,” Eddie said. He sniffed, already embarrassed by himself. “I’m from Derry, Derry Maine.”</p>
<p>             Richie’s eyes got narrower.</p>
<p>             “Derry…” he said slowly, chewing over the name. “It - I mean, it sounds familiar.”</p>
<p>             Eddie looked down at his lap, not daring to let himself hope. </p>
<p>             “What did you say your name was?” Richie asked.</p>
<p>             “Eddie,” Eddie said thickly. “Eddie Kaspbrak.”</p>
<p>             He thought all his hopes were quashed, but he realized he still looked up hopefully when he said his name, waiting for Richie to recognize it. But there were no gears turning behind Richie’s eyes, no sign of recognition in them. </p>
<p>             “Wait here,” Richie said, and he stood up, leaving Eddie sinking into the familiar couch. It even <em>smelled </em>familiar, like the Tozier household always had, and Eddie felt a wave of nostalgia and homesickness so strong that it threatened to overwhelm him. Eddie heard beeping coming from the other room, and then a clinking, and soon Richie was back, holding out a steaming mug in front of him.</p>
<p>             “It’s hot chocolate,” he said, and Eddie felt his stomach twist tighter. Mrs. Tozier’s hot chocolate was legendary, he should be happy to have it again, and yet. And yet.</p>
<p>             “Thanks,” Eddie said. He set the mug down on the coffee table and looked up at Richie. There was really nothing to lose, he thought.</p>
<p>             “Why are you here?” Richie asked. He looked so serious, it wasn’t like him. </p>
<p>             “I guess I’m here because I’m in love with you,” Eddie said, shocked that the words had slid so easily from his mouth. He had thought he would choke on them, but his throat was clear. </p>
<p>             Richie, for his part, stared at Eddie, his lips slightly parted in surprise, but no joke came. </p>
<p>             “What?” he said eventually.</p>
<p>             Eddie sighed. He should’ve drunk the hot chocolate before there was a danger of it being thrown in his face.</p>
<p>             “I realized the other night that you forgetting me wasn’t like everyone else - wasn’t like anyone else - because I’m in love with you. So, I stole a car and begged Mike and Stan to come with me seven hours away from home and we got a flat tire and I broke into two school buildings and we almost got arrested and it’s all because I’m in love with you, and I don’t know what to do, and I guess it doesn’t make a difference, but I had to say something.”</p>
<p>             “Is this…” Richie squinted at Eddie, “Some kind of weird prank?”</p>
<p>             “Do I look like I’m joking?!” Eddie asked. Richie shook his head solemnly. </p>
<p>             “No, I just…” he trailed off. He was looking right at Eddie, his gaze boring into Eddie’s eyes, like he was a difficult math problem. Richie was concentrating on something, and Eddie dared to let his hopes raise one more time.</p>
<p>             “Can you do me a favor?” Richie asked.</p>
<p>             “Anything,” Eddie promised rashly.</p>
<p>             “Yell at me,” Richie said. </p>
<p>             Eddie blinked.</p>
<p>             “What?” he said. </p>
<p>             “Yell at me,” Richie said again. </p>
<p>             “Just, about anything?” Eddie asked.</p>
<p>             “Yeah, anything you want, go for it,” Richie said.</p>
<p>             This was not how Eddie had expected the day to go, but he was helpless to deny Richie anything he wanted, so he stuck out his right hand and said-</p>
<p>             “Honestly, I cannot fucking believe you right now! You go and promise you won’t forget, and then you do, and then you ask me to YELL at you, and then-!”</p>
<p>             Richie’s mouth crashed into Eddie’s, in something too rash and sudden and clumsy to be a kiss, but the intent was clear. And oh, <em>oh</em>, then Richie was kissing him, and Eddie melted forward and kissed him back. He didn’t care if this was a joke or if Richie remembered him or had any clue what he was doing, this was Richie kissing him, and Eddie never wanted it to stop.</p>
<p>             But, inevitably, Eddie’s throat closed up from the weight of the day crashing into him, and he pulled back suddenly, gasping for air. He fumbled in his pocket for a moment, then pulled out his inhaler and took a deep pull from it. He felt the medicine coat his throat in the familiar, almost licorice taste, then swallowed convulsively and looked up at Richie, who was still staring at him inscrutably, like he was a difficult math problem. </p>
<p>             “Wheezy?” he said. Eddie felt like someone had kicked him in the chest.</p>
<p>             “Of course you remember that stupid nickname,” he said, hating the waver in his voice. He threw his arms around Richie’s neck and buried his face in Richie’s shoulder. “You remember me? Really?”</p>
<p>             “I think so,” Richie said. “It’s hazy, and I don’t remember everything, but you, I remember- you’re in love with me?”</p>
<p>             “Um,” Eddie pulled back, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You can forget about that, if you want. I didn’t want to make it weird, I just figured if there was no hope, then-”</p>
<p>             “I kissed you, dumbass,” Richie said. “Of course it’s weird, but I don’t mind. I- I mean, me too.”</p>
<p>             “You too?” Eddie said. </p>
<p>             “Please don’t be stupid right now,” Richie said. “I mean, like, same, man. At you, though.”</p>
<p>             “You like me back?” Eddie asked. “I mean, really? I didn’t think my odds were that good of you not punching me in the face, much less-”</p>
<p>             “I’ve always liked you, stupid,” Richie said. “I mean, I think I have? It’s fuzzy, but I remember-” he paused, turned tomato red, and looked down. “I remember loving you.”</p>
<p>             Eddie felt heat rise to his face as well, and he stared down at his knees.</p>
<p>             “I keep waiting for you to make a joke,” Eddie admitted.</p>
<p>             “I figured this wasn’t the time, but if you want, I can come up with something,” Richie said. “Um, it should’ve been no surprise, since good looks run in your family?”</p>
<p>             “Oh shut the fuck up,” Eddie said, smacking Richie on the shoulder.</p>
<p>             “Hey, domestic abuse!” Richie said, and he grinned at Eddie, and Eddie felt whole. Like he’d never been hurt in the first place. </p>
<p>             “So, you stole a car?” Richie said, one eyebrow raised. “Who are you and what’d you do with Eds?”</p>
<p>             “Don’t call me that,” said Eddie reflexively, though his heart felt fuller than it had in weeks, in months. “And, um, I missed you? What’s infinitely more shocking is that I got Stan in a stolen car.”</p>
<p>             “Stan?!” Richie said. “Stan’s out there? You left him out in the cold? Bring him in!”</p>
<p>             “Mike too,” Eddie said. “We all missed you, I just missed you the most. We should go home soon, honestly. Stan’s already missed one night of Chanukah, I’d had for him to miss another. And we’re all going to be grounded forever...”</p>
<p>             “Go?” Richie said. “What do you mean, go?”</p>
<p>             “We have to go back to Derry,” Eddie said. “And, um, I was hoping you’d come with us?”</p>
<p>             Richie stared at him.</p>
<p>             “I know it’s Christmas Eve,” Eddie said hurriedly. “I know the timing is rotten, and you’ve got your life here, but remember with Bill? Maybe you don’t, but when he came back to Derry, it was better for a while, so if you just run away and visit when you’re starting to forget, maybe we can stave this off? For a little longer? I just got you back, and I don’t wanna-”</p>
<p>             Richie cut him off by kissing him again, and Eddie melted once more. He could get used to this, he thought.</p>
<p>             “I just thought you were gonna leave me here,” Richie said. “I didn’t- I don’t wanna forget again.”</p>
<p>             “Then don’t,” Eddie said. “I’ll have my license soon, and there’s a Greyhound station in Derry, and your parents probably can’t even ground you if they don’t remember you’re leaving, and-”</p>
<p>             “Okay,” Richie said. “Okay, yeah. As long as it lasts, right?”</p>
<p>             “And when I turn eighteen,” Eddie said. “Maybe we could, I don’t know, we could go somewhere together? Maybe we’ll forget how we met, but we won’t forget each other.”</p>
<p>             Richie slipped his hand into Eddie’s, their fingers fitting perfectly together.</p>
<p>             “I’d like that,” he said. </p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>kind of a weak ending I thought, but I ran out of time and wanted to post this before Christmas, so I hope y'all like it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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